Childhood Bullying Victimization and Overweight in Young Adulthood: A Cohort Study
Open accessAbstract
Objective: To test whether bullied children have an elevated risk of being overweight in young adulthood and whether this association is: (1) consistent with a dose-response relationship, namely, its strength increases with the chronicity of victimization; (2) consistent across different measures of overweight; (3) specific to bullying and not explained by co-occurring maltreatment; (4) independent of key potential confounders; and (5) consistent with the temporal sequence of bullying preceding overweight. Method: A representative birth cohort of 2,232 children was followed to age 18 years as part of the Environmental Risk Longitudinal Twin Study. Childhood bullying victimization was reported by mothers and children during primary school and early secondary school. At the age-18 follow-up, we assessed a categorical measure of overweight, body mass index, and waist-hip ratio. Indicators of overweight were also collected at ages 10 and 12. Co-twin body mass and birth weight were used to index genetic and fetal liability to overweight, respectively. Results: Bullied children were more likely to be overweight than non-bullied children at age 18, and this association was (1) strongest in chronically bullied children (odds ratio = 1.69; 95% confidence interval [CI] = 1.21–2.35); (2) consistent across measures of overweight (body mass index: b = 1.12; 95% CI = 0.37–1.87; waist-hip ratio: b = 1.76; 95% CI = 0.84–2.69); (3) specific to bullying and not explained by co-occurring maltreatment; (4) independent of child socioeconomic status, food insecurity, mental health, and cognition, and pubertal development; and (5) not present at the time of bullying victimization, and independent of childhood weight and genetic and fetal liability. Conclusion: Childhood bullying victimization predicts overweight in young adulthood.
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Quasi-experimental methods offer a solution to help disentangle the causal effects of child maltreatment on mental health from confounding.
“Quasi-experimental methods offer a solution to help disentangle the causal effects of child maltreatment on mental health from confounding (13).”
From Childhood Maltreatment and Mental Health Problems: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis of Quasi-Experimental Studies (2023) · cites this paper as [13]
The Methods (Statistical analyses; page unavailable) describe adjusting for maltreatment and other potential confounders when studying bullying and later overweight. The Discussion (page unavailable) acknowledges that unmeasured variables may still confound those findings. Our copy does not address quasi-experimental methods for disentangling the effects of child maltreatment on mental health from confounding. (LLM, conf=0.76)
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“Maltreated children are also likely to experience other environmental risks for mental health problems, such as socioeconomic disadvantage (9) and bullying victimization (12).”
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- Authors
- Baldwin, J. R., Arseneault, L., Odgers, C., Belsky, D. W., Matthews, T., Ambler, A., Caspi, A., Moffitt, T. E., & Danese, A.
- Affiliations
- Duke University (US)
- Corresponding author
- Danese, Andrea
- ORCID
- Venue
- Psychosomatic Medicine
- Published
- 2016-11
- Volume
- 78
- Issue
- 9
- Pages
- 1094-1103
- ISSN
- 0033-3174 (ISSN-L)
- 1534-7796
- PMC
- PMC5098717
- OpenAlex
- W2501801755
- Cited by
- 75
- References
- 52
- Citations by year
- 2026: 2 · 2025: 6 · 2024: 29 · 2023: 3 · 2022: 5 · 2021: 3 · 2020: 7 · 2019: 5 · 2018: 7 · 2017: 6 · 2016: 2
- FWCI
- 10.37
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- green
- kclpure.kcl.ac.uk
- Licence
- other-oa
- Locations
- Psychosomatic Medicine (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- Research Portal (King's College London) (publishedVersion, other-oa)
- PubMed Central (acceptedVersion)
- UCL Discovery (University College London) (submittedVersion)
- eScholarship (California Digital Library) (submittedVersion)
- Funders
- National Alliance for Research on Schizophrenia and Depression
- Jacobs Foundation (G1002190, HD077482)
- Medical Research Council (HD077482, G1002190)
- Economic and Social Research Council (1364730, ES/P010113/1, RES‐177‐25‐0013)
- National Institute on Aging (P30AG034424)
- Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (R01HD077482, R01HD061298)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Social Psychology › Bullying, Victimization, and Aggression
- Health Sciences › Medicine › Public Health, Environmental and Occupational Health › Obesity, Physical Activity, Diet
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Clinical Psychology › Child Abuse and Trauma
- Keywords
- overweight, early adulthood, body mass index, waist-to-hip ratio, dose-response relationship, maltreatment, fetal programming, birth weight, Environmental Risk Longitudinal Twin Study, birth cohort
- MeSH terms
- Adolescent, Child, Child Abuse, Female, Follow-Up Studies, Humans, Male, Crime Victims, Overweight, Bullying
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