Obese kids face stigma, flunk school: European research

Obese children are far less likely to finish school than peers of normal weight, according to European research Thursday which also highlighted body image problems in kids as young as six. And these problems are likely to become bigger and bigger as the waistlines of European children expand – led by Ireland with 27.5 percent of under-fives classified as overweight, according to findings presented at a European Congress on Obesity in Prague. Britain had the second-highest rate with 23.1 percent, followed by Albania with 22 percent and Georgia with 20 percent, Bulgaria with 19.8 percent and Spain with 18.4 percent, said an analysis of data provided by 32 countries in the World Health Organization’s 53-member Europe region.

If you are being bullied at school, you are feeling all this stigmatisation, you don’t really want to go to school so maybe school absences could be one reason.

Emilia Hagman of the Karolinska Institutet

A second study presented at the congress said only 56 percent of children in Sweden who had received treatment for obesity completed 12 years or more of school, compared to 76 percent of normal-weight peers. The reasons were not clear, but study author Emilia Hagman of the Karolinska Institutet theorised that bullying might be a factor. A third research paper, conducted in England, found that children as young as six can be dissatisfied with being overweight. Obese children experience breathing difficulties, bone breaks, high blood pressure and “psychological harm”, according to a WHO factsheet.

Our study presents a worrying picture of rising obesity across Europe.

Dr Laura Webber, from the UK Health Forum in London, who co-led the research

Health Obesity