bullying and weight, from Pediatrics journal

If we know that for children in a higher weight bracket, bullying is significantly worse and we know that childhood bullying is related to mental health problems later in life...

...maybe we'll consider shifting the focus away from weight in the public discourse?

The researchers also tried to determine if overweight children from certain backgrounds were more vulnerable than others, and if some had social skills or other characteristics that protected them from bullying.

...

“The child who was obese was simply more likely to be bullied than the child who was not; none of these things affected it at all,” said Dr. Julie C. Lumeng, an assistant professor of pediatrics at the University of Michigan and the lead author of the paper, in the journal Pediatrics.

Times coverage here.