Psychological effects of bullying can last years

Psychological effects of bullying can last years - Kids who were bullied and acted as bullies themselves were at higher risk for depression, anxiety and panic disorder years down the line, in a new study.

Researchers have known that bullying can take a psychological toll on both bullies and victims, but it's been unclear just how long those effects would last.

One report published earlier this month found bullying targeting lesbian, gay and bisexual youth contributed to their feelings of depression and worthlessness as young adults (see Reuters Health story of Feb 4, 2013 here: http://reut.rs/XDx6mg).

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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Babies can be jerks

Babies can be jerks - Those mean girls might have been mean infants too, new research says

The question: It's human nature to want to hang out with people you have things in common with. ("You like chocolate-peanut-butter ice cream? So do I! Let's eat chocolate-peanut-butter ice cream together!") On the one hand, this trait is a positive one, since it helps people form social bonds. On the other, those shared interests can, at the very least, lead to the formation of cliques that exclude others for their differences. Worse yet, groups may reach the point at which they applaud when harm comes to outsiders — just think of the mean girls in high school who revel in others' pain. Researchers already knew, thanks to previous studies, that babies, like adults, had the propensity to like babies similar to them, gravitating toward those with the same taste in food or toys. But scientists wanted to examine whether the dark side of social identification was prevalent in babies as well. Do the roots of malevolent social biases take hold in infancy?

How it was tested: Researchers recruited 9- and- 14-month old babies for two separate studies. First, the infants' preference for green beans or graham crackers was established. Then the babies watched a series of puppet shows that featured a graham cracker-liking puppet and a green bean-liking puppet alternately being helped and harmed by other puppets. Finally, the babies chose between the helper puppet or the harming puppet.

The outcome: With combined samples of more than 200 infant participants, researchers found that both age groups overwhelmingly preferred the character that helped the puppet similar to them, over the character that harmed the similar puppet. But, surprisingly, when it came to the puppets that were dissimilar to the infants, the majority of babies in both age groups opted for the character that harmed them. In fact, their preference for the harming character, in the dissimilar scenario, was just as strong as it was for the helping character in the similar scenario. When the study was conducted again, this time with the addition of a neutral puppet, researchers found that the older group responded even more robustly to the harmer puppet.

Why this might be: The fact that babies act this way even before they can speak suggests that social biases "are based in part on basic aspects of human social evaluation," rather than learned through interacting with others. In other words, our social biases might be more nature than nurture.

What the experts say: The results are disheartening, says Karen Wynn, senior author of the study and professor of psychology and cognitive science at Yale University. "I was surprised, and my liberal bleeding heart sunk like a stone when we found them actual choosing, really robustly, the puppet who punishes." Wynn says there's need for more research, however. For one, the reasons behind the babies' choices are still unknown. Also, the babies might react differently if a parent or loved one cares for the dissimilar puppet.

But in the meantime, we'll leave you with this disheartening thought: Babies are kind of evil. ( theweek.com )

Blog : Contents Of Human Life | Proof: Babies can be jerks

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Parrots Can Reason Like 3-Year-Old Kids

Parrots Can Reason Like 3-Year-Old Kids - Parrots can draw conclusions about where to find a food reward not only from clues as to its location, but also from the absence of clues — an ability previously only seen in humans and other apes.

In a new study, researchers tested African Grey parrots on their reasoning abilities by shaking empty boxes and boxes filled with food so that the parrots could hear the snacks rattling around. To pick the box that would win them a treat, the parrots had to figure out that the sound indicated food and that a lack of sound from one box probably meant food in the other. It's a challenge that even human children can't reason through until about age 3.

African Grey Parrots show reasoning abilities similar to 3 year-old kids.

Experimenter Judith Schmidt works with an African Grey parrot.

"It suggests that Grey parrots have some understanding of causality and that they can use this to reason about the world," study scientist Christian Schloegl, a researcher at the University of Vienna, told LiveScience.

Reasoning parrots

African Grey parrots are known to be clever, as are many other birds. In earlier studies with Grey parrots, researchers have shown them two opaque boxes, one full of food and one empty. When the parrots are shown that one box has no food in it, they almost always pick the second box in search of a treat. 

This could be because the parrots infer that if one box is empty, the other is likely full, Schloegl said. But researchers couldn't rule out that they were simply avoiding the empty box for some unknown reason.

To find out, Schloegl, along with fellow University of Vienna researcher Judith Schmidt and colleagues, set up a more challenging task. In their new study, six African Grey parrots were presented with two opaque boxes, one containing walnuts and one empty. Instead of showing the parrots the empty box, however, the researchers shook the boxes so the parrots could hear the walnuts inside.

In some cases, the researchers shook either both of the boxes or neither box. In others, they shook just the empty box or just the full one. They found that the parrots could correctly determine that a noisy box was a full box. Even more impressively, when presented with a box that made no sound when shaken, the birds consistently picked the other box, seemingly reasoning that it must be full.

Evolution of intelligence

The results, detailed today (Aug. 7) in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B, prove that parrots can make judgments based on sounds as well as sight. But the birds still might have been avoiding the silent box rather than making inferences about the other box.

To rule out that possibility, Schmidt conducted several similar experiments, varying the types of motion and combinations of shaking and sound. In the final test, she wore tiny speakers snaked through her sleeves and attached to her wrists. When she picked up the boxes to shake them, the noise didn't come from the boxes but from the speakers.

In some cases, the speaker noise matched Schmidt's actions: She'd shake the box in her right hand and the sound would come from the hidden speaker on her right wrist. In other cases, the noise played from the opposite side of the box that she was shaking.

The parrots, she found, picked the correct, food-filled box at rates greater than random chance only when the shaking and the recorded noise matched up. In other words, the birds saw the connection between the motion and the noise, and then made the logical leap to connect both, but not one or the other, with food.

"The most important point is that higher intelligence is nothing that evolved only once," Schloegl said. Instead, he said, "comparable cognitive skills evolved several times in parallel in only distantly related species such as primates and birds." ( LiveScience.com )

Blog : Contents Of Human Life | Parrots Can Reason Like 3-Year-Old Kids

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Life not so sweet

Life not so sweet - Life not sweet for Philippines' sugar cane child workers - Barefoot and covered in dirt and sweat, 14-year-old Dante Campilan pulls weeds from orderly rows of sugar cane.

Wearing an oversized red cap to protect him from the scorching Philippine sun, Dante is doing work that should be reserved for men, not children.

Earning 150 pesos ($3.50) for a seven-hour day, Dante has been a child laborer in the Philippine region of Mindanao since he was seven years old. He says he does it to help his parents, but he is just one of many children who are part of an illegal economic system of child labor.

The International Labor Organization (ILO) estimates 2.4 million child workers are in the Philippines. Many of them, according to the ILO, are in rural areas working in fields and mines. The organization estimates 60% work in hazardous conditions.

Alongside Dante is 13-year-old Alvic James, who dropped out of school when he was in the first grade. Back then, he explained, his family didn't have enough money to eat. Alvic says he wants to learn to read and write but because he is needed in the fields he has no time to go to school.

When the boys turn 15 or 16, they'll move on to the more hazardous job of cutting sugar cane. That's currently the job of 16-year-old Elmar Paran, who hasn't been to school since he was a young child, sentencing him to a future in the fields.

The use of child laborers in the sugar fields of Northern Mindanao is so common that landowner Angeles Penda shrugs it off as a way of life. "The parents beg us to include their children to work," she said.

Much of the sugar produced in the fields here ends up in coffee shops, on kitchen tables and on store shelves across the world.

"We do not deny that child labor exists in our industry," said Edith Villanueva, the president and COO of the Sugar Industry Foundation. "It's a practice among families who are paid piecemeal for their work. They like to employ their children because there's more income for the families."

Villanueva said that paying workers more so they're not tempted to use their children has not worked in the past. She cites the strong cultural ties of families working together in the fields as one of the main problems.

"If you don't change their attitude and their values, then you don't change their way of life. There's a long-term solution and it's really education. We feel children should want to go to school, they should be kept in school, and aware of the rights of the children, the rights of the child to go to school and the right of the child to play," she said.

The child labor problem is so overt and widespread in this region that Villanueva says the Sugar Industry Foundation and the Coca-Cola Foundation are paying to build a four-room high school that is set to open later this month.

The Coca-Cola company is one of the largest buyers of sugar in the world and the sugar factories fed by the fields of Northern Mindanao call Coca-Cola one of their main customers.

In a statement to CNN, Coca-Cola said it "does not support, encourage or endorse any form of child labor in our operations throughout our global bottling system or in our supplier network."

The company says it conducts continuous assessments of its operations to ensure strong policies and practices are in place to help avoid child labor.

In September 2010, the Coca-Cola Foundation says it joined a coalition of the local government, the ILO and private industry to remove children from sugarcane fields with the hope of eradicating child labor in the Bukidnon region.

The Philippines government has also pledged to reduce child labor by 75% by 2015.

By then Dante will be 17-years-old. It's more likely that he will have graduated to cutting sugar cane than high school. ( cnn.com )

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Call for U-turn on when to wean baby after warnings that exclusively breast-feeding for six months 'causes allergies'

Call for U-turn on when to wean baby after warnings that exclusively breast-feeding for six months 'causes allergies'

Mothers are being warned that breastfeeding exclusively for six months may not be best for their babies and could put them at risk of allergies, food aversion and even obesity.

New research, which contradicts nearly a decade of official advice, says babies can be safely given solid foods at least eight weeks earlier in life.

Whatever's breast: Some breastfeeding specialists welcomed the 'common sense' findings that many mothers instinctively follow despite feeling guilty about ignoring official advice

British researchers have questioned guidelines issued in 2001 by the World Health Organisation – and supported by the Department of Health in 2003 – which told women to breastfeed for the first six months before giving solid foods to babies.

Based on WHO ‘global recommendations’, the aim was to help children worldwide avoid allergies and gastroenteritis.

But experts led by a paediatrician from University College London’s Institute of Child Health now claim the policy may actually have increased the risk of babies suffering allergies and iron deficiency. In addition, it could deter children from eating foods with bitter tastes that are good for them, fuelling the rise in obesity.

The new study in the British Medical Journal has sparked controversy, with the Royal College of Midwives claiming it can only benefit the baby food industry.

But other breastfeeding specialists welcomed the ‘common sense’ findings that many mothers instinctively follow despite feeling guilty about ignoring official advice.

The Department of Health last night stuck by the old guidelines, but admitted it has asked a panel of scientists to consider all the evidence and report back this year.

The new study says that when the WHO edict came out in 2001, many Western countries, including two out of three European nations, and the U.S. chose to ignore it.

But in 2003, Britain agreed to comply with the recommendation, which sprang from a review of 16 studies. They included seven from developing countries and the remainder from developed countries which were of ‘variable quality’.

The conclusion was that babies given breast milk alone for six months had fewer infections.

But another review of 33 studies carried out at the same time found ‘no compelling evidence’ against introducing solids at four to six months, known as weaning. There is growing evidence that breastfeeding alone for six months does not give babies all the nutrition they need, with some becoming iron deficient.

Babies fed on formula milk get extra iron, but they too are exposed to other drawbacks of late introduction of solid foods.

The new study says Swedish research links problems with tolerating gluten to a delay in eating it until six months – with the ideal wait being four to six months.

Professor Mary Fewtrell, who led the research team, said: ‘Perhaps the Department of Health might conclude similarly were it to commission an objective, independent review of the evidence.’

Clare Byam-Cook, an independent breastfeeding counsellor and former midwife, said: ‘The findings are long overdue because there is no evidence to show harm from introducing solids at three months or if the baby is over 12 pounds in weight.’

But Janet Fyle, policy adviser at the Royal College of Midwives, said changing official advice would be a retrograde step that ‘plays into the hands of the baby food industry’.

She said there was ‘irrefutable evidence’ that breast milk confers many health benefits on babies that last a lifetime.

A spokesman for the Department of Health said: ‘Mothers who wish to introduce solids before six months should always talk to health professionals first.’ ( dailymail.co.uk )

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The Planning for Baby

The Planning for Baby. Most couples don't just wake up one day and think, "Let's start a family now!" As much as some might wish their partners were that impulsive and enthusiastic, it's better to put some thought into this baby thing. Here's your to-do list.

Talk

Make sure you're reasonably settled, financially stable, getting along well (a kid won't help a faltering relationship), and 100 percent (not 99 percent) certain you both want this change in your lives.

Get Ready Physically

If you haven't had an annual exam in years, schedule one. Then book a pelvic exam and update your immunizations. Also ask your doctor about vitamins and supplements (folic acid) you should be taking.

Uncover Your Genes

Depending on your background, your doc may refer you to a genetic counselor who will run a battery of tests to see if you carry genetic disorders like Tay-Sachs, cystic fibrosis, or sickle cell anemia.

Tune up Your Teeth

All of the extra blood flow and estrogen in the body can lead to more plaque production and bleeding gums, so get a cleaning before you get pregnant and make sure your smile is in its optimal condition.

See a Financial Planner

Or give yourself a financial checkup. According to a 2002 report from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, it costs about $250,000 to raise a child to age 18.

Learn Your Cycle

Start tracking your cycles now so you know when (or about when) you ovulate. Most cycles are 28 days (making day 14 the best time to conceive), but this varies from woman to woman.

Make a Baby Budget

Save yourself a lot of stress by setting up your budget now for when the baby is born. Diapers aren't cheap!

Look into Disability and Life Insurance

Disability must be purchased before you become pregnant if you want it to cover your birth and postpartum time. Because most policies require several months before you're eligible, buy it in advance.

Find out About Family Leave

Have you been at your current job long enough to be covered by the Federal Family Leave Act? Every employer has its own policies on top of the law regarding how much maternity leave is paid (or partially subsidized).

Go to Jamaica!

Fly to France! Sail into the sunset! Really enjoy being a married couple -- a family of two. Travel becomes tricky (if not limiting) with a newborn, so get to as many sites now as you can (within your budget, of course).

Relax

This shouldn't feel like work., so have fun and don't get freaked out if you don't make a baby on the first shot. If you're in your mid-30s and don't conceive after six months, check in with your ob-gyn (three months if it makes you feel better). There are many variables that decide your fertility. In fact, half of all issues couples have lie with the men. ( thenest.com )

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Social networks and kids: How young is too young?

Social networks and kids: How young is too young ? -- Status updates, photo tagging and FarmVille aren't just for adults or even teenagers anymore.

Researchers say a growing number of children are flouting age requirements on sites such as Facebook and MySpace, or using social-networking sites designed just for them.

Facebook and MySpace require users to be at least 13. But they have no practical way to verify ages, and many young users pretend to be older when signing up.

Some scientists worry that pre-adolescent use of the sites, which some therapists have linked to Internet addiction among adults, could be damaging to children's relationships and brains.

But many other experts say there's not any solid research to back that up and that most children seem to use social-media sites in moderation, and in positive ways.

"For the most part, although there's so much press about all the bad things they're doing, much of what they do on these sites is stuff they would be doing anyway," said Kaveri Subrahmanyam, a professor of psychology at California State University-Los Angeles.

In two surveys reported this year by Pew Internet Research -- of 700 and 935 teens, respectively -- 38 percent of respondents ages 12 to 14 said they had an online profile of some sort.

Sixty-one percent of those in the study, ages 12 to 17, said they use social-networking sites to send messages to friends, and 42 percent said they do so every day.

The data in the study was from 2006, so it's not a stretch to assume those numbers are higher this year. Research on younger children is limited, but anecdotal evidence shows that many of them are also logging on.

"Of course they are," said Amanda Lenhart, a senior researcher at Pew and one of the report's authors. "They're using them because that's where their social world is. Because there's no effective way to age-verify ... children very quickly realize, 'I just say I'm 14 years old, and they'll let me use this.' "

Marc Bigbie, a software salesman who lives near Savannah, Georgia, said he has three children -- 14, 12 and 11 -- who all have accounts on at least one social-networking site.

His oldest daughter, then 11, was the first in the family to create an account, on MySpace. And it was without her parents' permission.

"It was kind of a negative thing at first," he said. "We kind of took it away from her. But, finally, we said, 'You can have it, but we need the password so we can be on there at any time.' "

Since then, all three of the kids have gotten Facebook accounts, with their parents even agreeing to fudge their ages.

Bigbie said he makes sure his children's accounts are set to provide as little personal information as possible, and they allow their activity to be seen only by confirmed friends. He and his wife monitor the pages to make sure they know the friends that their children have added.

He said the oldest daughter is the only one who uses the account almost every day, while the younger children log on briefly every now and then.

In the past couple of years, some scientists have voiced concerns that children are spending too much on these sites and that such online socializing could have lasting negative effects as they mature.

"My fear is that these technologies are infantilizing the brain into the state of small children who are attracted by buzzing noises and bright lights, who have a small attention span and who live for the moment," Susan Greenfield, an Oxford University neurocientist and director of Britain's Royal Institution, told London's Daily Mail in February.

"I often wonder whether real conversation in real time may eventually give way to these sanitized and easier [online] screen dialogues," she said.

Other scientists criticized Greenfield's comments, calling them speculation, not science.

Subrahmaynam said a study of high school students showed that in most cases, the people they interact with most often online are people they also socialize with in person.

Children today have spent their whole lives on computers, and their brains are better adapted than those of adults to integrate online activities with their offline lives, she said.

"You'll always have the small minority of kids who are not using it appropriately," she said. "I do think you're going to have a few people that are doing things that kids probably couldn't do with telephones a generation ago.

"But we don't want to get swept away by the general fear. It's here, and it's pretty harmless."

Many parents also worry that younger users of social sites could be targets for online predators. While there are some concerns that kids aren't mature enough to make good decisions about their privacy, Subrahmaynam and Lenhart said most are savvy enough by their early teens to know what, and who, to avoid. Younger children, they say, need more parental supervision.

Alternately, a growing number of networking sites are geared specifically toward younger users. Sites such as Disney's Club Penguin -- mainly a game site, but with limited social functions -- WebKinz and Whyville feature more restricted and supervised networking.

Such kids-oriented sites are "sort of a training ground" for future use of mainstream social networks, Lenhart said.

Children as young as 5 have accounts at KidSwirl, a kids' social-networking site patterned loosely on Facebook, said creator Toby Clark.

Clark said the average user spends about five minutes on the site per visit -- far less than Facebook's average of more than 20 minutes.

He said he limits the amount of time his two children, 9 and 6, spend on the site, but that any parent who bans their children from such sites isn't facing the facts.

"The reality is that we're a technology-driven generation," said Clark, who launched the site in February and said it has about 10,000 users. "That's not going to change."

So what long-term effect will social networking have on children? Scientists say it may be hard to know for sure.

"We've lost the control group," Subrahmanyam said. "How do you find a group of kids that are not using the computer?". CNN

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