Being bullied and feeling ashamed: Implications for eating psychopathology and depression in adolescent girls

• Autor(a) principal: Duarte, Cristiana
• Data de Publicação: 2015
• Outros Autores: Pinto-Gouveia, José, Rodrigues, Tânia
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: por
• Título da fonte: Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal (Repositórios Cientìficos)
• Texto Completo: http://hdl.handle.net/10316/47318; https://doi.org/10.1016/j.adolescence.2015.08.005
• topic: Adolescent; Body Image; Body Mass Index; Child; Crime Victims; Depression; Feeding and Eating Disorders; Female; Humans; Psychological Tests; Self Concept; Surveys and Questionnaires; Bullying; Shame

The current study examined the associations between peer victimization, body image shame, self-criticism, self-reassurance, depressive symptoms and eating psychopathology in 609 female adolescents. Correlational analyses showed that being the victim of bullying was positively associated with body image shame, self-criticism, with low self-reassurance, depressive symptoms and eating psychopathology. A path analysis indicated that victimization experiences were associated with increased depressive symptoms partially through increased levels of body image shame, and a severe form of self-criticism - hated self. Body image shame and hated-self self-criticism fully mediated the association between victimization experiences eating psychopathology. The tested model accounted for a total of 51% of depressive symptoms variance and for 52% of eating psychopathology variance. These findings may have important intervention and prevention implications, by suggesting that bullying experiences fuel body image shame and consequent self-directed hostility and anger, which, in turn, predict increased depressive symptomatology and eating psychopathology in female adolescents.