Associations between weight‐related teasing and psychosomatic symptoms by weight status among school‐aged youth

Abstract

Objective Weight‐related teasing (WT) is associated with poor mental health. This study examined whether weight status moderates the relationship between WT and psychosomatic symptoms within a representative sample of school‐aged youth. Methods Data are from the Canadian 2013/2014 Health Behaviour in School‐aged Children Survey, a nationally representative sample of youth in Grades 6–10. WT, psychosomatic symptoms and body mass index (BMI) were self‐reported. Results The final sample consisted of 20,277 youth (mean age = 14.2 years; 50.2% female). The prevalence who reported being WT at least once a week was 4.6%, 8.1% and 17.3% among youth with normal weight, overweight, and obesity, respectively (p < 0.001). There was a gradient relationship between the frequency of WT and psychosomatic symptoms (p < 0.001). By comparison to youth that were not WT, psychosomatic symptom z‐scores were significantly (p < 0.05) higher in youth that were WT one to two times in the past few months (0.47, 95% CI: 0.41–0.53), two to three times per month (0.65, 0.52–0.77), about once a week (0.82, 0.71–0.93) and several times a week (0.98, 0.84–1.12). However, the WT * BMI category interaction term was not significant (p = 0.86). Conclusions Victims of WT experienced more psychosomatic symptoms independent of BMI category; however, BMI category did not moderate the association between WT and psychosomatic symptoms.

Keywords

• adolescent
• bullying
• mental health
• obesity