The Impact of Body Shaming and Its Effect on Mental Well-Being in Youth

Body shaming is bullying a person based on their physical appearance and can impact a person’s mental well-being. Body shaming, both self-shaming and shaming from others, can lead to social appearance anxiety and depression. Whereas social appearance anxiety is an individual’s anxiety about being evaluated based on their appearance, depression in this context denotes an individual’s lost interest in various social activities due to the fear of appearance-based judgment from others. Even though numerous studies have demonstrated the effect of body shaming on mental health, there is a lack of studies assessing the prevalence, patterns and impact of body shaming among young adults and adolescents, who comprise the majority of the Indian population. This research study aimed to understand the body-shaming patterns and their impact on mental well-being in youth. A descriptive research method was employed to collect data from 60 respondents, selected through a simple random sampling technique, from the Kattappana Block Panchayat of Idukki District in Kerala. The results indicated that more than half of the sample faced body shaming in day-to-day life and were worried about their appearance in public, which established a correlation between mental well-being and body-shaming patterns.