Victims of bullies suffer the psychological consequences all the way until middle age, with higher levels of depression, anxiety and suicide, new research shows.
The immediate ill effects of bullying have been well documented, with experts increasingly seeing it as a form of child abuse. Influential studies from Finland have made the case that people who were bullied as kids continued to suffer as young adults – girls who were bullied grew up to attempt and commit suicide more frequently by the age of 25, for instance, and boys were more likely to develop anxiety disorders.
Now a trio of researchers has taken an even longer view. They examined data on roughly 18,000 people who were born in England, Scotland and Wales during a single week in 1958 and then tracked periodically up through the age of 50 as part of the U.K.’s National Child Development Study.
Back in the 1960s, when the study subjects were 7 and 11 years old, researchers interviewed their parents about bullying. Parents reported whether their children were never, sometimes or frequently bullied by other kids.
The immediate ill effects of bullying have been well documented, with experts increasingly seeing it as a form of child abuse. Influential studies from Finland have made the case that people who were bullied as kids continued to suffer as young adults – girls who were bullied grew up to attempt and commit suicide more frequently by the age of 25, for instance, and boys were more likely to develop anxiety disorders.
Now a trio of researchers has taken an even longer view. They examined data on roughly 18,000 people who were born in England, Scotland and Wales during a single week in 1958 and then tracked periodically up through the age of 50 as part of the U.K.’s National Child Development Study.
Back in the 1960s, when the study subjects were 7 and 11 years old, researchers interviewed their parents about bullying. Parents reported whether their children were never, sometimes or frequently bullied by other kids.
Victims of bullying were more than twice as likely as other kids to contemplate suicide and about 2.5 times as likely to try to kill themselves, according to a new study that quantifies the emotional effects of being teased, harassed, beaten up or otherwise harmed by one's peers. Children and teens who were taunted by cyberbullies were especially vulnerable -- they were about three times as likely than other kids to have suicidal thoughts, the study found. The findings, published online Monday by the journal JAMA Pediatrics, puts the lie to the old adage about sticks and stones.
Many of us have been bullied at least once. It could be at school, on the internet or out in many places in the world. Most bullying happens in schools. Its an act in which one person makes another person feel bad about them self or anything at all. If you let the bully taunt you your feeding him. Your allowing him or her to do it more. Some bullying situations are really bad. There have been many cases that people or students have taken their on lives because there were bullied. I'm trying to stop it. Why don't you join me to stop the bullying. That is my goal. You can also call the kids help phone to help you with the bullying. There for bullying must be stop please help me to stop it. It hurts me to see it or hear about it.