Can Dark Chocolate Alleviate Anxiety, Depressive and Stress Symptoms Among Trainee Nurses? A Parallel, Open-Label Study

Objective: this interventional study was aimed to investigate the effects of dark chocolate consumption on anxiety, depression, and stress (ads) among trainee nurses. methods: a parallel and open-label experimental study was conducted. of the 128 nurses enrolled, only 47 participated in the intervention study (mean age = 20.32 years; ranging from 19 to 22 years old). they were randomly assigned to an intervention group (ig, n = 25) or a control group (cg, n = 22). the ig consumed dark chocolate and cg ingested mineral water for 3 consecutive days. the validated malay hospital anxiety and depression scale (hads) and depression, anxiety and stress scale (dass-21) were utilised for measuring ads levels. data were analysed descriptively and score comparisons were conducted using non-parametric tests. results: no significant differences between ig and cg in ads scores were detected at baseline (all p > 0.05). at post-consumption, ads score were significantly reduced in ig (all p < 0.01) compared with cg (all p < 0.05). larger effect sizes among these respondents had also revealed that there were mood-elevating effects of dark chocolate consumption. conclusion: this study has discovered that 3-day consumption of dark chocolate may alleviate ads status among trainee nurses suggesting that dark chocolate may have a more prominent role in improving emotional and mood generally. further investigations are however warranted to confirm this finding