Reuters/Reuters - A student sits in class at a South Dakota high school in a file photo. REUTERS/Jim Young
In the new study, depression and anxiety
tied to bullying at school persisted at least through people's
mid-twenties. Worst off were those who had been both bullies and targets
of bullying, according to findings published Wednesday in JAMA
Psychiatry.
"It's obviously very well established how problematic bullying is short-term," said William Copeland, a clinical psychologist who led the new study at Duke University Medical Center in Durham, North Carolina.
"I was surprised that a decade down the road after
they've been victimized, when they've kind of transitioned to adulthood,
we would still see these emotional marks for the victims and also the
bullies/victims."
His team's research included 1,420 youth from Western
North Carolina who were asked about their experiences with bullying at
various points between age nine and 16, then were followed and assessed
for psychiatric disorders through age 26.
Just over one-quarter of kids and their parents
reported they were bullied at least once, and close to one in ten said
they had bullied other kids.
After adjusting for the participants' history of family
hardships, the researchers found that, compared to young adults with no
history of bullying, former victims were at higher risk for a range of
psychiatric conditions.
For example, 6 percent of uninvolved youth went on to have an anxiety disorder, versus 24 percent of former bullying victims and 32 percent of youth who had been both bullies and targets of bullying.
Kids who originally reported both bullying and being
bullied were the most likely to be diagnosed with panic disorder or
depression as young adults or to consider suicide.
"It's not
surprising that that would be the case, because in part they're reacting
to the trauma of being bullied and they also carry with them the
experience of having bullied," said Dr. Mark Schuster,
chief of general pediatrics at Boston Children's Hospital and a
professor at Harvard Medical School, who wasn't involved in the new
research.
"These folks are the ones who get bullied and instead
of experiencing empathy… they're more reactive and they see bullying as
more of a way of getting attention," Copeland told Reuters Health.
Youth who were just bullies and never picked-on
themselves were at four times higher risk for antisocial personality
disorder, which is characterized by a lack of empathy and mistreatment
of others.
Psychiatric disorders in childhood and kids' family
problems were tied to bullying but didn't fully explain future problems,
Copeland and his colleagues found. Some of the adult disorders seemed
to stem from the bullying itself, they said.
The study "calls attention to just how serious bullying
can be, and it reinforces what we've been learning, which is that
bullying is not just a rite of passage, it's not just part of growing up
and all kids experience it and they're stronger for it," Schuster told
Reuters Health.
"From everything we understand at this point, it can have serious long-term consequences."
Researchers said schools, parents and doctors need to work together to try to prevent bullying in the first place.
But for kids who have experienced bullying, Schuster
said a supportive adult can go a long way toward preventing future
psychological consequences.
"In part they need an adult who can help them navigate
this, who can help put an end to the bullying and can create a safe
haven for them," he said.
"Having to keep the secret that you're bullied and not
having anyone to turn to for advice and support makes it that much
harder." ( Reuters Health )
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