Prevalence of pica in female university students and its relationship with anxiety, stress and general health

Abstract

The CUITent study was aimed to examine the prevalence of Pica in female university students and its relationship with anxiety, stress, and general health. For this purpose, Pica Questioill1aire (Stillmon, 2008), Somatic Symptom-Adult Scale (Spitzer, Williams, and Kroenke, 2002), Anxiety Adult-2 (PROMIS Health Organization, 20 12), and Perceived Stress Scale (Cohens, 1983) were used. Main Study focused on testing the research hypotheses on a sample consisted of 253 female university students with an age range 18 to 30 years. Cronbach alpha Reliabilities of all measures were found to be satisfactory. The results showed that 159 female university students eat nonfood items; more prevalent were raw rice, frozen frost, and ice. They reported to have unexplainable craving that forced them to eat nonnutritive food items. Group differences showed that students having Pica had significantly more somatic symptoms than those not having Pica, hence, Hypothesis II got confmned. Those having Pica reported more stomach ache, constipation, iron deficiency, anxiety, and stress on open-ended questions, however, independent-sample t-test showed nonsignificant differences on Pica scores across those having physical health problem, nutritional deficiency, and mental health problem than their counterparts. Nevertheless, they all scored high on somatic complaints, anxiety, and stress than their counterparts. Pica was found to have significant positive relationship with somatic complaints, but not with anxiety and stress hence, Hypotheses 1 was rejected. Age had significant positive relationship with somatic complaints and weight had significant positive relationship with somatic symptoms, anxiety, and perceived stress. Analyses were also run across study discipline, mother's education, and father 's education. Findings were discussed in the light of past literature and etiological perspective. Limitations, suggestions, and in1plications for future research have also been discussed.