Body Image And Its Relationship With Depression, And Social Avoidance & Anxiety Among Undergraduates

Body image represent complex, prevalent, and significant health problems, particularly among adolescents and young adults. Despite many researches in west have studied body image and its relations with psychological problems, it remains ignored in China. In order to make clear if the problem of body image is the same among Chinese undergraduate and what kind of the relationship is between the body image and depression, social avoidance and anxiety in a undergraduates population, we first assessed the 680 undergraduates in two larger northeastern universities, and they completed four measures: MBSRQ, WHR, CES-D, and SAD. Second, we did a experience to look into whether there is the self-discrepancy to cognition of body image and its relationship to depression and disordered eating. At last we analyzed the students self-drawings to give a qualitative research on the body image of the students. Hypotheses were that female students would be less satisfied with their bodies than male students, that students with poor body image would have higher levels of depression and social avoidance & anxiety than students with good body image, that depressed students would negatively distort their body image and nondepressed students would positively distort their body image, and that the relationship that exists among the variables body images, depression, and social avoidance & anxiety.The results showed that: (1) There were many students who show dissatisfied with their body image, and female students were significantly less satisfied with their bodies than male students. The male students wanted to be stronger and the female students wanted to be skinnier than they actual were. As for the degree of satisfaction with personal body shape, both male and female students prefer normal ones, but the male wanted to have a higher WHR and female wanted to have a lower WHR. (2)The female students were more concerned about the appearance and weight than their male counterparts. (3) A significant relationship was found among body image, depression, and social avoidance & anxiety. Also, it was found that the existence of the relationship between depression and the self-discrepancy of body image. (4)The results suggest that body image may play a greater role in depression and social avoidance & anxiety levels for those who have lower evaluation and less satisfied with their body image but not those who are satisfied with their bodies, and that who...