Being bullied is regarded as a severe social stressor that may activate the stress response system and lead to a range of downstream biological processes that may contribute towards the risk of diabetes [
31]. In agreement with this, bullying at work has, for example, been found to be related to a higher level of saliva dehydroepiandrosterone sulphate [
32], although no increase in saliva cortisol has been documented [
33] and there is no clear finding from longitudinal studies on stress biomarkers [
34]. Nevertheless, these hormones may work together in affecting cellular activities and metabolic, cardiovascular and immune variables [
15,
35]. Metabolic changes and obesity are also possible mechanisms underlying the observed higher risk of type 2 diabetes associated with both bullying and violence, as stress responses may be related to the endocrine regulation of appetite [
36]. In the present study, the relationships between bullying and violence and type 2 diabetes attenuated after adjustment for baseline BMI, which can either be due to the fact that obese employees are more likely to be targets for workplace bullying or violence or that exposed employees are more likely to gain weight and become obese. The first explanation (i.e. that obesity leads to bullying) was, however, not supported in a sensitivity analysis presented in a previous paper on bullying and cardiovascular disease based on data from the FPS study, where the authors did not find an association between baseline BMI and incident workplace bullying [
37]. On the other hand, it is likely that both workplace bullying and violence can induce comfort eating behaviour [
12] or increase the risk of experiencing negative emotions [
8,
26,
38], and further contribute to weight gain and subsequent development of type 2 diabetes, making the causal pathway very plausible.