The Weight Control in Adolescents Affecting on the Stress by Mediating Subjective Body Shape Cognition

The purpose of this study is to prove whether weight control influences stress cognition in adolescence and subjective body shape cognition has a mediating effect between weight control and stress cognition. To do this, 62,823 adolescents from the first year of junior high school to the third year of high school were analyzed using data from the 14th (2018) Youth Health Behavior Survey conducted by the Ministry of Education, the Ministry of Health and Welfare, and the Center for Disease Control. The results of the study are summarized as follows. First, the weight control of adolescents was found to affect stress cognition. In other words, weight control was found to increase stress awareness in adolescents. Second, subjective body shape cognition has a partial mediating effect in relation to weight control affecting stress cognition. Based on the research results, this study suggested that providing a program to build an appropriate body shape cognition at school would contribute to reducing adolescents’ stress.