Published Paper Details:

Body shaming increases the personal insecurities of individuals as it highlights the weaknesses, especially when it happens in public setting and this may be the greatest fear as it brings out negative emotions. Objectives of the study were to identify the extent of body shaming among students of health professional education and to create awareness among students of health professional educational institutions on harmful effects of body shaming. The study was conducted among 57 randomly selected nursing and Allied health sciences students of an institute, affiliated to the Kerala University of Health Sciences. Present study, the participants who experienced body shaming felt sad, anger, depression and even felt to rebuke the sadist who had done body shaming direct to the need for further studies and implement measures to protect the social integrity and psychological well-being of those exposed to shaming. 35.7% were careless about body shaming, 33.9% were not worried, 16.1% were worried, 8.9% resort to medical help and treatment and 5.6% rebuke the person who humiliate or a sadist. 71.4% felt that they have no issues on physique still experienced body shaming. While expressing the feelings about body shaming, 26.8% had expressed being sad, 30.4% expressed anger, 14.3% were depressed and 28.6% were not able to say their feelings on body shaming. This study had unveiled the need for initiating awareness programmes for professional students to curtail the harmful effects of body shaming and to prevent the untoward physical and mental health issues of the young generation