Energy drinks, depression, insomnia and stress among Palestinians: The mediating role of cigarettes smoking, electronic cigarettes and waterpipe

Abstract

We investigated the association between energy drinks, depression, insomnia and stress among Palestinians and whether cigarette smoking, electronic cigarettes, and waterpipe mediate the association between these variables. Our study sample consisted of 506 Palestinian adults: 120 men and 386 women recruited from online advertisements, e-mail campaigns and social media. Findings showed a positive correlation between energy drinks, depression, insomnia, and stress. While a positive correlation was found between energy drinks, cigarette smoking, electronic smoking and waterpipe. Results of path analysis showed that energy drinks, cigarette smoking, electronic smoking and waterpipe mediated the correlation between energy drinks, insomnia, depression and stress. Thus, there is an urgent need to increase community awareness regarding the adverse effects of excessive energy drink consumption among Palestinians. Accordingly, training programs, workshops, and open days targeting Palestinians to improve awareness of the adverse effects of energy drinks on physical and mental health are crucial to reducing Palestinians’ extensive use of energy drinks.

Keywords:

• Energy drinks
• insomnia
• stress
• depression
• smoking
• waterpipe
• Palestine

Compliance with ethical standards

Ethical approval

All procedures performed in this study involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of An- Najah University’s Research Ethics Board, the American Psychological Association (APA, 2010) and with the 2013 Helsinki Declaration.

Conflict of interest

The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest. All authors agreeing for submitting the manuscript to the Journal of Ethnicity in Substance Abuse

Funding

No funding was received for this study.

Availability of data

The datasets generated during and/or analyzed during the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.

Informed consent

Informed consent was obtained from all participants.

Authors’ contributions

All authors contributed equally to this work