Being bullied and using drugs are associate with eating disorder symptoms in Brazilian students

Abstract

Objective: This study's main purpose is to evaluate factors associated with eating disorder (ED) symptoms among Brazilian adolescents.

Method: The sample consisted of 5,213 students, mean age 13.24 (SD ±0.01), in the eighth grade of 93 public schools from three Brazilian cities. Data were collected through an anonymous self-report questionnaire, assessing: sociodemographics, use of alcohol, tobacco, illicit drugs, binge drinking, bullying, and ED symptoms. We used confirmatory factor analysis and multivariate linear regression.

Results: We found that high levels of bullying victimization, binge drinking and the use of unprescribed weight-loss substances were associated with higher levels of ED symptoms to both genders. However, only among girls, the higher age (β = .10; 95% CI = 0.02; 0.17) and the use of illicit drugs (β = .21; 95% CI = 0.094; 0.34) were associated with increase in the ED symptoms.

Discussion: We demonstrate a significant association of ED symptoms with drug use and bullying, highlighting the importance of addressing these factors in the development of ED prevention strategies.

Keywords: adolescents; bullying; drugs; eating disorder; epidemiology; prevention.