The role of difficulty in emotion regulation in the relationship between premenstrual syndrome symptoms and emotional eating behavior in healthy women of reproductive age

Premenstrual Syndrome (PMS) occurs in the luteal phase of the menstrual cycle and decreases or disappears with the onset of menstruation; It is defined as a condition that manifests itself with physical, psychological and behavioral symptoms without an underlying psychiatric disease. It is thought that the hormonal changes seen in PMS may have an impact on mood fluctuations and emotional eating behavior, which is affected by our emotions. In this context, the mediating role of difficulty in emotion regulation in the relationship between PMS symptoms and emotional eating behavior in healthy women without a known psychiatric diagnosis was examined. Healthy women of reproductive age (N=254) were evaluated using the Premenstrual Syndrome Scale (PMSS), the Difficulties in Emotion Regulation Scale-Short Form (DERS-16), the Emotional Eating Scale (EES), and The Emotional Appetite Questionnaire (EAQ). The mediating role of emotion regulation difficulties in the relationship between PMS symptoms and emotional eating behavior was tested with a simple mediation model using PROCESS Macro. As a result, the total indirect effect was found to be significant (p=0.000), and when the emotion regulation difficulty variable was added to the model, the direct effect of PMS on emotional eating behavior decreased, but it was still significant, and it was observed that the relationship in question was partially mediated by emotion regulation difficulty. The mediator variable explained 11% of the variance in emotional eating behavior. The current study is thought to be important in that it presents the first findings examining the mediating role of emotion regulation difficulties in the relationship between emotional eating behavior and PMS and reveals the need for more research on the subject in the future.