Obese boys, girls more likely to be bullied

Obese grade-school children are more likely to be the targets of bullying than their leaner peers are, a UK study suggests.

Researchers found that among more than 8,000 7-year-olds, obese boys and girls were about 50 percent more likely to be bullied over the next year than their normal-weight classmates.

On the other hand, obese boys were also more inclined to describe themselves as bullies. Compared with normal-weight boys, they were 66 percent more likely to physically or verbally harass their peers—presumably, the study authors speculate, because of their dominant size.

In contrast, obese girls were not more likely to be bullies, according to findings published in the Archives of Disease in Childhood.

The findings suggest that children need to learn from an early age that it’s not okay to tease or bully over body size, said lead author Lucy J. Griffiths, a researcher at the Institute of Child Health in London.

Children as young as 4, she told Reuters Health, have been shown to have negative feelings toward drawings of overweight children their age. The “thin is good, fat is bad” view, Griffiths said, appears to take shape in the early preschool years.

Other studies have reached conclusions similar to her team’s. One study of Canadian high school students found that obese teenagers, male and female, were more likely to have been bullied or to have bullied other kids. Those researchers speculated that some overweight teens may have become perpetrators in retaliation for being bullied at a younger age.

The fact that obese 8-year-old boys may be more likely to bully other kids is something schools should be aware of, Griffiths said.

The study included 8,210 children who were interviewed and had physical exams at the ages of 7 and 8. Overall, children who were obese at age 7 were at greater risk of being regularly bullied by the age of 8.

Among obese boys, 36 percent were victims of “overt” bullying—meaning they were physically hurt, intimidated or called names—and they were 54 percent more likely than their normal-weight peers to be bullied. The findings were similar for girls, with 34 percent being frequent targets of the same forms of bullying.

Fourteen percent of obese boys were self-described perpetrators, versus 10 percent of normal-weight boys. Still, Griffiths and her colleagues write, this finding should not overshadow the fact that heavy boys were much more likely to be victims than bullies.

So besides the long-term physical health consequences of obesity, the researchers conclude, many overweight children may also face the psychological and social effects of bullying.

“This study suggests that parents, school personnel, and health professionals need to reduce the occurrence of this behavior and the social marginalisation of obese children at an early age,” they write.

SOURCE: Archives of Disease in Childhood, February 2006.

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