Chocolate craving when depressed: a personality marker

Funding from the Australian National Health and Medical Research Council (Program Grant 222708) and a grant-in-aid from Pfizer International.

We examined links between chocolate craving in people who are depressed and both personality style and atypical depressive symptoms, with a web-based questionnaire completed by nearly 3000 individuals reporting clinical depression.

Chocolate was craved by half of the respondents (more so by women), judged as beneficial for depression, anxiety and irritability, and associated specifically with personality facets encompassed by the higher-order construct of neuroticism.

The simple question of depression-associated chocolate craving appeared an efficient discriminator of DSM–IV atypical depression symptoms.

We examined links between chocolate craving in people who are depressed and both personality style and atypical depressive symptoms, with a web-based questionnaire completed by nearly 3000 individuals reporting clinical depression. Chocolate was craved by half of the respondents (more so by women), judged as beneficial for depression, anxiety and irritability, and associated specifically with personality facets encompassed by the higher-order construct of neuroticism. The simple question of depression-associated chocolate craving appeared an efficient discriminator of DSM–IV atypical depression symptoms.

Hyperphagia is commonly reported by depressed patients and is a specific DSM–IV criterion (American Psychiatric Association, 1994) for defining ‘atypical depression’, a depressive syndrome combining symptom and personality criteria. Our earlier review (Parker et al, 2002) of atypical depression weighted the primacy of a personality style of rejection sensitivity, with several symptoms (including food cravings) more reflecting self-consolatory and possibly homoeostatic strategies. In another review (Parker et al, 2006a) we overviewed studies considering mood state effects of chocolate consumption. In this study we investigate self-reported benefits of chocolate during a depressive episode and examine for any specificity of personality style to such chocolate craving.

People accessing – for whatever reason – our mood disorder consumer information website (http://www.blackdoginstitute.org.au) were invited to participate in an online survey of lifetime treatments for a depressive episode (and without any reference to the survey involving questions on chocolate consumption). Participants provided demographic data, reported symptoms and treatments of depressive episodes, and rated any increase in 35 symptoms or coping responses, degree of increased food cravings and importance of chocolate when depressed. All completed the tiered Temperament and Personality questionnaire (Parker et al, 2006b), assessing personality constructs disposing to depression from higher-order constructs (e.g. ‘neuroticism’ and ‘extraversion’) to eight lower-order facets. As participants were recruited anonymously, no data validity check was possible.