Associations between bullying and risk for eating disorders in adolescents.
Priscilla Dos Reis Oliveira, Marta Angélica Iossi Silva, Wanderlei Abadio de Oliveira and 4 others
PMID 38018614WHAT IT FOUND
Bullying victims had higher eating-disorder risk than non-involved students (41.8% vs 16.8%).
Boys who were victims had higher risk scores than other boys. This cannot show cause.
Key findings
0141.8% of victims were at risk for an eating disorder, compared with 16.8% of non-involved students.
02Among boys, victims had higher total eating-disorder questionnaire scores than non-involved boys, victim-bullies, and bullies.
03For boys, physical, verbal, and relational victimization were significantly linked to eating-disorder scores; for girls, aggression was not.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for RNs
Read the rest of this summary
You get three full summaries a month, free, and we do not ask for a card. Search, the TL;DRs and your library stay unlimited either way.
What it does not show
The study was done in one public school using accessible sampling, so the results may not apply to other schools or regions. Only 491 of 1,600 invited students took part, so students who did not participate may have differed from those who did. The design was cross-sectional, so it cannot show that bullying caused eating-disorder risk or that eating-disorder risk caused bullying involvement. Data came from adolescent self-report, and aggressors may have underreported their behavior because they were worried about being recognized.
Declared interests
The paper reports funding by grant 2018/04570-0 and no other conflicts of interest.
The easy way to misread this
Do not read this as proof that bullying causes eating disorders. The study is cross-sectional and measured eating-disorder risk, not diagnosed disorders, so cause and direction are not established.