Breakfast Skipping, Psychological Distress, and Involvement in Bullying: Is There a Connection?

Abstract

The occurrence of bullying and cyber-bullying is widespread throughout the world, and serious consequences of this complex phenomenon continue to plague individuals and society. Many studies have revealed a link between victimization and multiple adversities including health and quality of life issues. Since very little research attention has been given to evaluate victimization and breakfast-eating behavior in adults, the current study sought to examine the association between breakfast skipping, psychological distress, and victimization (both traditional and cyber). Three hundred eighty-two undergraduate students (235 females, 147 males) enrolled in Introductory Psychology completed surveys assessing bullying involvement, psychological distress, and breakfast-eating tendencies. Results revealed that being bullied (face-to-face and online) was correlated negatively with breakfast consumption and positively with psychological distress. A hierarchical linear regression model indicated that psychological distress, breakfast skipping, and gender were significant predictors of cyber-victimization, while psychological distress and breakfast skipping were significant predictors of traditional victimization. Utilizing the biopsychosocial theoretical model, the findings suggest that psychological distress may help explain the link between bullying victimization and breakfast skipping. Results of the study support the relevance of breakfast-eating behavior in the phenomenon of bullying victimization and the need to include nutritional education in intervention programs.

Forms of Bullying and Associations Between School Perceptions and Being Bullied Among Finnish Secondary School Students Aged 13 and 15

“…At school, bullying aggravates feelings of insecurity, and it threatens students' health, well-being, and motivation towards school work (Pörhölä 2008). In several studies, bullying in general has been associated with poor health (Callaghan et al 2014; UNESCO 2019), health complaints (Due et al 2005;Nansel et al 2004;Pörhölä 2008;Hager and Leadbeater 2015), poor self-esteem (Gendron et al 2011), poorer grades (Erginoz et al 2015;Juvonen et al 2010; UNESCO 2019), psychological distress (Sanders 2019), depressive symptoms (Minkkinen 2015), and loneliness (Hong and Espelage 2012;Acquah et al 2016;UNESCO 2019). In research, loneliness has been recognised as one factor associated with adverse peer relations and an important predictor of peer victimisation (see e.g.…”

Socioeconomic Effects in Cyberbullying: Global Research Trends in the Educational Context

“…Table 2 lists these two forms of crime, bullying [57] and CB [58,59], through their typologies. Among the main differences that are made explicit in CB, they highlight: (i) intentionality, the aggressor must have the intention of harming the victim so that a true phenomenon of harassment occurs; (ii) repetition, CB, like bullying, requires that the aggression be reproduced more than once, (iii) the imbalance of power, which can result both from the victim's helplessness in the face of aggression and from technological anonymity, since the person cannot do anything against the aggression, cannot delete a photo or video from the Internet that has already been broadcast; (iv) absence of physical and social feedback between the participants, that is, as there is no physical contact between the aggressor and the victim, this means that it is not possible to know the victim's reaction, but it does promote disruptive, uninhibited behaviour in the victim aggressive and impulsive; and (v) open channel, unlike bullying, in which harassment of the victim occurs in a specific space (school, institute or on the way to/from home), in CB, with the possibilities of new technologies, aggressor can commit his attacks at any time [60][61][62][63][64].…”