Being Bullied About Weight May Raise Risk of Drug Use

By Robert Preidt
HealthDay Reporter

TUESDAY, March 3, 2020 (HealthDay Information) — Teens who are bullied about their excess weight are at elevated chance for liquor or marijuana use — and this is especially true for ladies, a new research implies.

Researchers surveyed a lot more than one,three hundred college students at 5 public center faculties in Connecticut. The college students have been requested if siblings, dad and mom or peers had teased them about their excess weight, human body form or having throughout the earlier 6 months.

Far more than fifty percent (55%) reported excess weight-related teasing, together with seventy six% of chubby ladies, seventy one% of chubby boys, 52% of ladies who were not chubby, and forty three% of boys who were not chubby.

Repeated teasing about excess weight was associated with bigger stages of over-all liquor use, binge ingesting and marijuana use, though the research could not verify a cause-and-impact link.

A comply with-up study 6 months later on located that excess weight-related teasing remained linked to elevated liquor use and binge ingesting, according to the research revealed on-line not too long ago in the journal Psychology of Addictive Behaviors.

“This kind of bullying is incredibly frequent and has lots of detrimental outcomes for adolescents,” mentioned direct research author Melanie Klinck, a scientific study assistant at the University of Connecticut.

The association involving visual appearance-related teasing and material use was strongest amid chubby ladies, the scientists mentioned.

“These conclusions elevate greater challenges about how society locations too a great deal emphasis on natural beauty and human body picture for ladies and females, and the damaging outcomes that may perhaps final result,” mentioned research co-author Christine McCauley Ohannessian, director of the Center for Behavioral Overall health at Connecticut Children’s Clinical Center.

“Faculties and communities really should especially handle visual appearance-related teasing in anti-bullying procedures and material-use interventions,” she mentioned in a journal information launch.

“Dad and mom notably have a role to participate in in addressing this problem. There is some startling study displaying that some of the most hurtful examples of excess weight-dependent teasing come from dad and mom or siblings, so people really should be form when they talk about the excess weight of their young children,” Ohannessian included.