A Cross-Sectional Analysis of College Students' Diet, Mental Health, and Hindrances to Healthy Lifestyles.

Abstract

Objective: To determine whether dietary intake and restrictions on diet are correlated with sleep, academic achievement, and/or mental health in a college population. Methods: We used Qualtrics to survey a large public university in the Northeast for Fall 2022, Spring 2023, and Fall 2023 academic semesters (n = 98;104;90) for campus demographics, diet quality, dietary restrictions, food insecurity, sleep quality and quantity, stress (PSS), anxiety (GAD-7), depression (PHQ-9), and academic success (GPA). We performed Spearman rho and Pearson r analyses (IBM SPSS, alpha = 0.05). Results: Diet quality correlated positively with GPA (Rho = 0.265, P < 0.05), dietary restrictions (Rho = 0.498, P < 0.05), and sleep hours (r = 0.284, P < 0.05), but negatively with anxiety (Rho = -0.300, P < 0.01), stress (r = -0.225, P < 0.05), and depression (r = -0.434, P < 0.05). Food insecurity correlated positively with anxiety (Rho = 0.488, P < 0.001), stress (r = 0.557, P < 0.001), and depression (r = 0.489, P < 0.001), but negatively with GPA (Rho = -0.390, P < 0.05). Sleep quality correlated negatively with stress (r = -0.269, P = 0.008), depression (r = -0.350, P < 0.001), and anxiety (Rho = -0.248, P = 0.014). Conclusions: Correlations among diet, food insecurity, dietary restrictions, sleep, and mental health metrics suggest that improvements in diet benefit students' lifestyles. However, more restrictive diets do not appear to be deleterious, implying a reduced need for dietary interventions in this population.