ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Public Health
Sec. Public Mental Health
This article is part of the Research TopicThe Role of Psychological Constructs in Chronic Disease Prevention and Management: A Public Health PerspectiveView all 4 articles
Anxiety, Depression, Eating Behaviors, and Irrational Food Beliefs as Predictors of Type 2 Diabetes Risk in Honduran Adults
Provisionally accepted
- National Autonomous University of Honduras, Tegucigalpa, Honduras
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Chronic conditions like type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) require a multidimensional understanding of health, especially in low-resource settings. This study examined the association between psychological symptoms (anxiety, depression), cognitive factors (irrational food beliefs), behavioral variables (eating patterns, physical activity), and T2DM risk in adults from Honduras. A cross-sectional survey was conducted with 336 adults using online convenience sampling. Participants completed a modified Finnish Diabetes Risk Score (FINDRISC), Patient Health Questionnaire-9 (PHQ-9), Generalized Anxiety Disorder-7 (GAD-7), Irrational Food Beliefs Scale, and the Eating Behavior Phenotype Scale. Most participants had no prior diagnosis of hypertension, elevated glucose, or diabetes, though 61.9% were overweight or obese. Results suggest that when compared to men, women reported higher symptoms of depression and emotional grazing, while also reporting lower hyperphagic eating. No significant differences were found for T2DM risk, irrational food beliefs, anxiety, hedonic eating, disorganized eating, or compulsive eating. On the other hand, anxiety, depression, and age modestly predicted T2DM risk, explaining 18.1% of its variance. Depression was linked to all eating behaviors, while irrational food beliefs predicted some eating phenotypes but not T2DM risk. Although sex was associated with specific eating patterns, it did not predict diabetes risk. Disordered eating did not mediate the relationship between psychological symptoms and T2DM risk. However, the cross-sectional design used precludes causal inference, the mediation results should be interpreted as descriptive rather than causal, and the use of non-random sampling limits the generalizability of the findings. These findings highlight the importance of integrating mental health and lifestyle interventions to reduce vulnerability to type 2 diabetes, especially in at-risk populations.
Keywords: type 2 diabetes mellitus, Anxiety, Depression, Irrational food beliefs, eating behavior, Health Psychology
Received: 25 Jul 2025; Accepted: 28 Oct 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Maradiaga, Landa-Blanco and Mejia-Sanchez. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Estrella Maradiaga, estrella.maradiaga@unah.hn
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