As referenced in Chapter 1 , bullying can be either direct or indirect, and children and youth may experience different types of bullying. Specifically the committee examines physical including neurobiological , mental, and behavioral health consequences. The committee also examines consequences for academic performance and achievement and explores evidence for some of the mechanisms proposed for the psychological effects of bullying. When applicable, we note the limited, correlational nature of much of the available research on the consequences of bullying.
Mounting evidence on bullying has highlighted the detrimental effects of being bullied on children's health and behavior Gini and Pozzoli, ; Lereya et al. In this section, the committee reviews the research on physical, psychosocial, and academic achievement consequences for those children and youth who are bullied. Being bullied makes young people incredibly insecure: When you're being bullied, you can feel constantly insecure and on guard.
Even if you're not actively being bullied, you're aware it could start anytime. It has a big mental and emotional impact—you feel unaccepted, isolated, angry, and withdrawn. You're always wondering how you can do better and how you can escape a bully's notice. You're also stunted because of the constant tension and because maybe you forego making certain friendships or miss out on taking certain chances that could actually help your development.
See Appendix B for additional highlights from interviews. The physical health consequences of bullying can be immediate, such as physical injury, or they can involve long-term effects, such as headaches, sleep disturbances, or somatization. In one of the few longitudinal studies on the physical and mental effects of bullying, Bogart and colleagues studied 4, children and their parents from three urban locales: Birmingham, Alabama; 25 contiguous school districts in Los Angeles County, California; and one of the largest school districts in Houston, Texas.
Bogart and her team were interested in the cumulative effects of bullying on an individual. They collected data when the cohort was in fifth grade to , seventh grade to , and tenth grade to The Physical Health Subscale measured perceptions of physical quality of life. Bogart and colleagues found that children who were bullied experienced negative physical health compared to non-involved peers.
Understanding Bullying Among Children -Why Do Kids Bully?
Among seventh grade students with the worst-decile physical health, 6. These effects were not as strong when students were in tenth grade. Limitations to this study were that physical health was measured by participants' perceptions of their health-related quality of life, rather than by objectively defined physical symptoms. It is critical to understand that this study, or other studies assessing correlations between behavior and events, cannot state that the events caused the behavior.
Future research might build on this large multisite longitudinal study and obtain more in-depth evidence on individuals' physical health as a consequence of bullying. In their study of 2, twins reared together and separately as a part of the Environmental Risk E-Risk Longitudinal Twin Study, Baldwin and colleagues found that children who had experienced chronic bullying showed greater adiposity subsequently, but not at the time of victimization.
An important future direction for research is to gather more information on physical consequences such as elevated blood pressure, inflammatory markers, and obesity in light of work showing effects on these outcome of harsh language by parents and other types of early life adversity Danese and Tan, ; Danese et al. Most of the extant evidence on the physical consequences—somatic symptoms in particular—of bullying pertains to the individual who is bullied.
The emotional effects of being bullied can be expressed through somatic disturbances, which, similar to somatization, are physical symptoms that originate from stress or an emotional condition. Common stress or anxiety-related symptoms include sleep disorders, gastrointestinal concerns, headaches, palpitations, and chronic pain.
The relationship between peer victimization and sleep disturbances has been well documented Hunter et al.
Why Do Kids Bully? Understand Bullying Among Children
For instance, Hunter and colleagues examined sleep difficulties feeling too tired to do things, had trouble getting to sleep, and had trouble staying asleep among a sample of 5, Scottish adolescents. One limitation of this study is that it was based on self-reports, which have sometimes been criticized as being subject to specific biases. Patients with insomnia may overestimate how long it takes them to fall asleep Harvey and Tang, Another limitation is that the study included young people at different stages of adolescence.
Sleep patterns and sleep requirements vary across the different stages of adolescence. A recent meta-analysis based on 21 studies involving an international sample of , children and adolescents examined the association between peer victimization and sleeping problems. A broader focus on peer victimization was used because of the definitional issues related to bullying. Moreover, the relationship between peer victimization and sleeping problems was stronger for younger children than it was for older children van Geel et al. This study was based on cross-sectional studies that varied widely in how peer victimization and sleeping problems were operationalized and thus cannot make any claims about causal relations between peer victimization and sleeping problems.
Knack and colleagues a posited that bullying results in meaningful biological alterations that may result in changes in one's sensitivity to pain responses. A recent meta-analysis by Gini and Pozzoli concluded that children and adolescents who are bullied were at least twice as likely to have psychosomatic disturbances headache, stomachache, dizziness, bedwetting, etc. Although the use of self-report measures are very common in bullying research and are usually considered to be valid and reliable Ladd and Kochenderfer- Ladd, , their use requires adequate self-awareness on the part of the respondent, and some children who are bullied may be in denial about their experience of having been bullied.
Portrait of a Bully
There is also evidence of gender differences in the physical effects of being bullied. For example, Kowalski and Limber examined the relation between experiences with cyberbullying or traditional bullying i. Students were asked how often in the past 4 weeks they experienced 10 physical health symptoms, with scores across these 10 symptoms averaged to provide an overall health index higher scores equal more health problems.
The authors found that girls who were traditionally bullied reported more anxiety and overall health problems than boys who were bullied females: A limitation of this study is that it is correlational in nature and the authors cannot conclude that being a victim of traditional bullying caused the psychological or physical problems.
In summary, it is clear that children and youth who have been bullied also experience a range of somatic disturbances. There are also gender differences in the physical health consequences of being bullied. Psychological and physical stressors, such as being the target of bullying, activate the stress system centered on the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal HPA axis Dallman et al.
The role of HPA and other hormones is to promote adaptation and survival, but chronically elevated hormones can also cause problems. Stress has ubiquitous effects on physiology and the brain, alters levels of many hormones and other biomarkers, and ultimately affects behavior. Therefore, both a general understanding of stress during early adolescence and, where known, specific links between stress and bullying can provide insight into the enduring effects of bullying.
The levels of the stress hormone cortisol have been shown to change in targets of repeated bullying, with being bullied associated with a blunted cortisol response Booth et al. To the committee's knowledge, no study has examined bidirectional changes in cortisol, although there is evidence to suggest that cortisol is typically elevated immediately following many types of stress and trauma but blunted after prolonged stress Judd et al.
Kliewer did find that cortisol increased from pre-task to post-task i. However, in these studies, the immediate effect of being bullied on stress reactivity was not examined. In contrast, Ouellet-Morin and colleagues and Knack and colleagues b did not find an increase in cortisol in bullied youth following a psychosocial stress test but rather found a blunted pattern of response after the test had concluded see Figures and In order to test whether, in the short-term, bullying produces an increase in cortisol, whereas in the long-term it is associated with a blunted cortisol response as seen with other types of psychosocial stressors; Judd et al.
The importance of this future work notwithstanding, there is evidence to support a finding that when stress becomes prolonged, the stress hormone system becomes hypofunctional and a blunted stress response results McEwen, Cortisol reactivity for victimized and nonvictimized adolescents during the Trier Social Stress Test. Adapted from Knack et al. Adapted from Ovellet-Morin et al. When stress becomes prolonged, the stress hormone system becomes hypofunctional and a blunted stress response results Knack et al.
That is, the elevation in cortisol in response to stress fails to occur. Cortisol has many functions and serves to regulate myriad biological systems; a blunted stress response compromises the orchestration of cortisol's biological functions. The critical importance of the massive over-activation of the stress system producing a blunted stress response is clinically relevant since it is associated with posttraumatic stress disorder and other psychiatric disorders Heim et al.
It is also relevant for understanding an individual's inability to self-regulate and cope with stress. Prolonged stress also disrupts the circadian or daily rhythm of cortisol, which is normally elevated in the morning and slowly decreases over the day to result in low levels at bedtime Barra et al. An altered circadian rhythm results not only in difficulty awaking in the morning but also in difficulty falling asleep at night.
It can cause profound disruption in sleep patterns that can initiate myriad additional problems; sleep deficits are associated with problems with emotional regulation, learning, mood disorders, and a heightened social threat detection and response system McEwen and Karatsoreos, Recent research suggests that the consolidation of memories 2 one learns each day continues during sleep Barnes and Wilson, ; Shen et al. Sleep disturbances disrupt memory consolidation, and studies in animals suggest stress during learning engages unique neurochemical and molecular events that cause memory to be encoded by some unique mechanism Baratta et al.
Although victims of bullying have sleep problems Miller-Graff et al. Indeed, these correlations between being a target of bullying and physiological problems may highlight important interactions between events and outcome, but it is also likely that unidentified variables might be the critical causal factors. It is also noteworthy that the HPA axis showed heightened responsiveness during the peak ages of bullying Blakemore, ; Dahl and Gunnar, ; Romeo, ; Spear, For example, cortisol response characteristics in children are such that, when cortisol is activated, the hormonal response is protracted and takes almost twice as much time to leave the blood and brain compared to adults Romeo, , The circadian rhythm of cortisol also seems altered during early adolescence, most notably associated with morning cortisol levels, with levels increasing with age and pubertal development Barra et al.
Animal models suggest that the extended cortisol response begins in pre-puberty and indicate that recovery from stressful events is more challenging during this age range Romeo, Emotional regulation, including a person's ability to recover from a traumatic or stressful event, involves being able to regulate or normalize stress hormone levels. Specifically, it is well documented in the human and animal research literature that a sensitive caregiver or a strong support system can greatly dampen the stress system's response and actually reduce the amount of stress hormone released, as well as shorten the amount of time the stress hormones circulate within the body and brain.
This results in dramatic decreases in stress-related behavior Gee et al. The social cues actually reduce stress by reducing the activation of the stress system, or HPA axis, at the level of the hypothalamus Hennessy et al. The social stimuli that buffer children as they transition into adolescence appear to begin to have greater reliance on peers rather than on the caregiver Hostinar et al.
Other physiological effects of stress include the activation of the immune system by bullying-induced stress Copeland et al. Other hormones and physiological mechanisms are also involved in the stress activation response. For example, cortisol is associated with an increase in testosterone, the male sex hormone associated with aggression in nonhuman animals and with dominance and social challenge in humans, particularly among boys and men Archer, In humans, there is increasing evidence supporting an interaction between testosterone and cortisol in the prediction of social aggression see Montoya et al.
In a study of year-olds, Vaillancourt and colleagues found that testosterone levels were higher among bullied boys than nonbullied boys, but lower among bullied girls than nonbullied girls. The authors speculated that the androgen dynamics were possibly adrenocortical in origin, highlighting the need to examine testosterone and cortisol in consort. To date, researchers have only investigated cortisol response to being bullied Kliewer, ; Knack et al.
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There are no studies examining these two important hormones together in relation to bullying perpetration or to being bullied. Together, the research on both humans and animals suggests that stress is beneficial when it is experienced at low-to-moderate levels, whereas prolonged or repeated stress becomes toxic by engaging a unique neural and molecular cascade within the brain that is thought to initiate a different developmental pathway. Indeed, from animal models, brain architecture is altered by chronic stress, with amygdala activity being enhanced, hippocampal function impaired, and medial prefrontal cortex function being reduced, leading to increased anxiety and aggression and decreased capacity for self-regulation, as well as a more labile mood Chattarji et al.
This stress effect on the brain is particularly strong when experienced during adolescence, but it is even more pronounced if combined with early life adversity Gee et al. This could produce behavioral responses that become maladaptive by compromising emotional and cognitive functioning or perhaps it could produce adaptive behavior for a dangerous environment that results in socially inappropriate behavior. Being a child or youth who is bullied changes behavior, and neuroscience research suggests this experience may also change the brain Bradshaw et al.
The major technique used to monitor brain function in humans is functional magnetic resonance imaging fMRI , which works by monitoring blood flow to indirectly assess the functioning of thousands of brain cells over an area of the brain. This technique has rarely been used on either the perpetrator or target of a bullying incident during this very particular social interaction, and for that reason little is known about whether or not the brain of a child who bullies or of a child who has been bullied is different before these experiences or is changed by them.
These very specific studies are required before one can make definitive statements about the brain for this topic or for how this information might help develop novel interventions or prevention. Additionally, it is important to consider two limitations for understanding fMRI. First, one cannot scan the brain of a child during the action of bullying or being a target of bullying. Instead, one must rely on the child staying perfectly still as the investigator tries to approximate one or two aspects of the complex experience that occur in this complicated behavioral interaction.
For example, the fMRI task used during a brain imaging session might mimic social exclusion as one facet of bullying, without the full social and emotional context of the real bullying process. Although this is an important methodology, these results need to be assessed with caution at this time and not directly applied as an accepted scientific interpretation of bullying. Therefore, the examples used below to assess brain function rely not on monitoring actual instances of bullying behavior but on monitoring components of behaviors that are thought to occur during a bullying incident.
Second, fMRI monitors a large brain area, which is composed of many smaller brain areas, each of which is involved in many, many behaviors, many of which are not yet fully understood. Thus, it is difficult to determine why the brain area one is examining changed, since that brain area is involved in hundreds of diverse behaviors. For this reason, the results reviewed below need to be viewed as preliminary and should not be misinterpreted as explaining any aspect of the experience of bullying.
Rather, these preliminary results highlight the importance of brain assessment before and after bullying experiences, including developing monitorable tasks that more closely approximate the bullying experience within the physical constraints of an immobile subject during an fMRI brain scan. The value of neuroscience is that it enables exploration of brain mechanisms controlling behavior that are not obvious from behavioral assessment.
Whereas there are no studies directly examining bullying using neural imaging techniques, there are several studies examining how the brain processes social pain. Social pain is consistent with how people describe their feeling about being bullied. Researchers have demonstrated that when people experience social pain, they activate regions in their brain similar to those activated when they experience physical pain Eisenberger, ; Eisenberger and Lieberman, ; Eisenberger et al.
Specifically, the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex, which is part of the prefrontal cortex, seems to be implicated in the processing of both physical and social pain. The fact that physical and social pain have overlapping neural systems might explain why people tend to use physical pain metaphors e. Eisenberger and Leiberman noted that these fMRI results are correlations between pain and the anterior cingulate cortex and could reflect other functions of that brain region, such as detecting conflict or errors, different ideas or goals about the task, or individual differences in the task difficulty.
In a recent fMRI study by Rudolph and colleagues , adolescent girls were socially excluded during a laboratory task i. Results indicated that activation of the social pain network—the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex, subgenual anterior cingulate cortex, and anterior insula—was associated with internalizing symptoms. Of note, this effect was particularly pronounced among adolescent girls with a history of peer victimization. In addition to studies on social pain, there are some studies examining how the brains of children who had been bullied reacted subsequently to different stimuli.
Experiences of being bullied can alter an individual's view of the world. While no brain imaging study has directly addressed this issue, a longitudinal study investigating the risk factors of depression found that being a child who was bullied at ages 11 and 12 was associated with a decreased response to reward in the medial prefrontal cortex at age 16, although it was unclear if these brain differences were present before the bullying experiences or developed after them Casement et al.
The medial prefrontal cortex, which is a brain area involved in memory and learning, was found to be disrupted in children who have been bullied Vaillancourt et al. Because it also has countless other functions including decision making, risk taking, and conflict monitoring, disruption of this region compromises one's ability to interpret results with respect to bullying Euston et al.
CONSEQUENCES FOR INDIVIDUALS WHO ARE BULLIED
In another fMRI study involving children, years old, who were presented with a task that examined their response to negative feedback stimuli of emotional faces, greater and more extensive brain activation was found in the amygdala, orbitofrontal cortex, and ventrolateral prefrontal cortex of children who had been rejected by their peers, compared with children in a control group who had not been rejected by peers Lee et al. The prefrontal cortex is a very large brain area with many subareas, all of which serve diverse functions in many different behaviors, not just executive function.
These few studies are consistent with other imaging studies demonstrating functional brain differences among individuals who were maltreated in childhood Lim et al. Taken together, this work supports a finding that being exposed to such adversity during maturation has enduring effects on brain function, although additional research is needed to establish the parameters controlling these effects and qualifying the generalization.
There is also evidence that stressful events, such as might occur with bullying experiences, impact emotional brain circuits, an inference that is supported by changes in amygdala architecture and function described earlier in animal models in adulthood but more robust changes in brain structure are produced by stress during early life and around adolescence Chattarji et al. This point is critical because the stress system of adolescents seems to have a heightened sensitivity, and experiencing bullying can increase stress hormones Romeo, , ; Spear, ; Vaillancourt et al.
Human brain scanning experiments suggest the prefrontal cortex is affected by stress through attenuating the connectivity to the hippocampus and amygdala, which are brain areas critical for emotional regulation and emotional memories Ganzel et al. Animal research shows that this connectivity loss is caused by stress-induced atrophy of the prefrontal cortex Radley et al.
One aspect of being a target of bullying is that the memory of the experience seems to be enduring; the unique function of the prefrontal cortex and emotional circuits during preadolescence and adolescence may provide insight into the enduring memories of being bullied.
Specifically, one function of the prefrontal cortex is to help suppress memories that are no longer important or true. Typically, memories are not simply forgotten or unlearned. Rather, as we update information in our brain, the old memory is suppressed by overlaying a new memory to attenuate the old memory, an active brain process called extinction Milaid and Quirk, With respect to memories of trauma, of being bullied, or of experiencing a threat, the prefrontal cortex is important for attenuating extinguishing memories in emotional brain areas, such as the amygdala.
Importantly, dramatic changes occur in the extinction system during adolescence, where fear extinction learning is attenuated relative to children and adults Pattwell et al. This learning mode has been modeled in animals to understand how the process occurs in the adolescent brain Kim and Richardson, ; Nair and Gonzalez-Lima, ; Pattwell et al. The research suggests that around the time of adolescence, it is more difficult to decrease emotionally aversive memories, such as experiences of being bullied, than at other times in the life cycle.
Furthermore, anxious teens anxiety is sometimes comorbid with experience of being bullied show even greater difficulties with processing extinction of fear memory Jovanovic et al. In conclusion, the available evidence indicates that the brain functioning of individuals who are bullied is altered see reviews by Bradshaw et al. However, it is difficult to ascertain fully what it means when fMRI scans detect an alteration in brain activity. In terms of understanding the prolonged and repeated stress associated with bullying, this research suggests that greater experience with being bullied and repeated exposure as a target of bullying produces a neural signature in the brain that could underlie some of the behavioral outcomes associated with being bullied.
In this section, the committee examines what is known about the psychosocial consequences of being bullied. A common method of examining mental health issues separates internalizing and externalizing problems Sigurdson et al. Internalizing symptoms include problems directed within the individual, such as depression, anxiety, fear, and withdrawal from social contacts. Externalizing symptoms reflect behavior that is typically directed outwards toward others, such as anger, aggression, and conduct problems, including a tendency to engage in risky and impulsive behavior, as well as criminal behavior.
Externalizing problems also include the use and abuse of substances. Psychological problems are common after being bullied see review by Hawker and Boulton, and include internalizing problems, such as depression, anxiety, and, especially for girls, self-harming behavior Kidger et al. There can also be subsequent externalizing problems, especially for boys see review by McDougall and Vaillancourt, Rueger and colleagues found consistent concurrent association with timing of peer victimization and maladjustment. Both psychological and academic outcomes were particularly strong for students who experienced sustained victimization over the school year.
So they are isolated and they are angry, they are fearful. Many of them end up severely depressed, attempting suicide, utilizing NSSIs [nonsuicidal self-injuries] for comfort. Some turn to gangs because that is the group that would accept them. So that's when we get involved and we have to start working backwards. A robust literature documents that youth who are bullied often have low self-esteem and feel depressed, anxious, and lonely Juvonen and Graham, Data from developmental psychopathology research indicate that stressful life events can lead to the onset and maintenance of depression, anxiety, and other psychiatric symptoms and that for many youth, being bullied is a major life stressor Swearer and Hymel, Based on sociometric nominations, targets of bullying also are disliked by the general peer group Knack et al.
Several meta-analyses have specifically explored the relation between depression and being bullied at school Ttofi et al. Individuals who had been cyberbullied reported higher levels of depression and suicidal ideation, as well as increased emotional distress, externalized hostility, and delinquency, compared with peers who were not bullied Patchin, ; Ybarra et al. Furthermore, severity of depression in youth who have been cyberbullied has been shown to correlate with the degree and severity of cyberbullying Didden et al. Two meta-analyses found that across several different longitudinal studies using different study populations, internalizing emotional problems increases both the risk and the harmful consequences of being bullied Cook et al.
Internalizing problems can thus function as both antecedents and consequences of bullying Reijntjes et al. Although most longitudinal studies suggest that psychological problems result from being bullied see review by McDougall and Vaillancourt, and meta-analyses Reijntjes et al. In a large cohort of Canadian children followed every year from grade 5 to grade 8, Vaillancourt and colleagues b found that internalizing problems in grades 5 and 7 predicted increased self-reported bullying behavior the following year.
For instance, Kochel et al. The idea that certain individuals may be more sensitive to environmental cues or make more hostile interpretation of ambiguous social data has been well documented in the literature Crick and Dodge, ; Dodge, This work is consistent with studies showing that social information processing differs in children based on their experience with being bullied and that hypersensitivity can impact their interpretation of social behavior and their self-reports of subsequent incidents of being bullied Camodeca et al.
Most longitudinal studies to date are of relatively short duration i. Nevertheless, there are several recently published studies examining the long-term adult outcomes of childhood bullying. These studies indicate that being bullied does affect future mental health functioning, as reviewed in the following paragraphs. Most long-term studies of childhood bullying have focused on links to internalizing problems in adulthood, demonstrating robust long-standing effects Gibb et al. For example, Bowes and colleagues examined depression in a large sample of participants who reported being the target of bullying at age 13 and found higher rates of depression at age 18 compared to peers who had not been bullied.
Specifically, they reported that In another longitudinal study using two large population-based cohorts from the United Kingdom the ALSPAC Cohort and the United States the GSMS Cohort , Lereya and colleagues reported that the effects of childhood bullying on adult mental health were stronger in magnitude than the effects of being maltreated by a caregiver in childhood.
The association remained after adjusting for potentially confounding individual and family factors and was not attributable to diagnostic overlap with depression. Frequently victimized adolescents were also more likely to develop multiple internalizing problems in adulthood Stapinski et al. These findings suggest that being bullied and internalizing problems such as depression are mutually reinforcing, with the experience of one increasing the risk of the other in a harmful cycle that contributes to the high stability of being both bullied and experiencing other internalizing problems. These studies also suggest that the long-term consequences of being bullied, which extend into adulthood, can be more severe than being maltreated as a child by a caregiver.
Alcohol and drug abuse and dependence have been associated with being bullied as a child Radliff et al. A longitudinal study of adolescents found that those who reported being bullied were more likely to report use of alcohol, cigarettes, and inhalants 12 months later Tharp-Taylor et al. More longitudinal research that tracks children through adulthood is needed to fully understand the link between being bullied and substance abuse see review by McDougall and Vaillancourt, Several studies show links between being bullied and violence or crime, especially for men Gibb et al.
Evidence from the broader research on childhood trauma and stress indicates that earlier adverse life experiences, such as child abuse, are associated with the development of psychotic symptoms later in life Institute of Medicine and National Research Council, b. Until recently, the association between bullying and psychotic symptoms has been understudied van Dam et al. Two recent meta-analyses support the association between bullying and the development of psychotic symptoms later in life Cunningham et al.
Nonclinical psychotic symptoms 7 place individuals at risk for the development of psychotic disorders Cougnard et al. Although some research has found this association, a recent longitudinal study from New Zealand found that the link between bullying and the development of psychosis later in life is likely not causal but instead reflects the fact that individuals who display disordered behaviors across childhood and adolescences are more likely to become bullying targets Boden et al. A recent meta-analysis conducted by Cunningham and colleagues examined ten European prospective studies, four from the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children.
These results were consistent in all but one of the studies included in the meta-analysis.
Girl Bullies: Understanding Different Types Of Bullying
More longitudinal research is needed to more fully understand the mechanisms through which trauma such as bullying may lead to the development of psychotic symptoms Cunningham et al. Importantly, this research will need to be prospective and examine the development of bullying and psychotic symptoms in order to truly identify the temporal priority. The inclusion criteria for the Cunningham and colleagues meta-analysis included that the study had to be prospective and had to include a measure of psychosis and that bullying needed to be reported before the age of A growing literature has documented that targets of bullying suffer diminished academic achievement whether measured by grades or standardized test scores Espelage et al.
Cross-sectional research indicates that children who are bullied are at increased risk for poor academic achievement Beran, ; Beran and Lupart, ; Beran et al. The negative relation between being bullied and academic achievement is evident as early as kindergarten Kochenderfer and Ladd, and continues into high school Espinoza et al. In a 2-week daily diary study with ninth and tenth grade Latino students, Espinoza and colleagues reported that on days when adolescents' reports of being bullied were greater than what was typical for them, they also reported more academic challenges such as doing poorly on a quiz, test, or homework and felt like less of a good student.
Thus, even episodic encounters of being bullied can interfere with a student's ability to concentrate on any given day. In a cross-sectional study of more than 5, students in grades 7, 9, and 11, Glew and colleagues found that for every 1-point increase in grade point average GPA , the odds of being a child who was bullied versus a bystander decreased by 10 percent.
However, due to the cross-sectional nature of this study, this association does not establish whether lower academic achievement among children who were bullied was a consequence of having been bullied. Several short-term one academic year longitudinal studies indicate that being bullied predicts academic problems rather than academic problems predicting being a target of bullying Kochenderfer and Ladd, ; Schwartz et al.
Given the impairments in brain architecture associated with self-regulation and memory in animal models and the currently limited imaging data in human subjects, this is a reasonable inference, although reverse causation is possible. For instance, early life abuse and neglect impair these same abilities, lower self-esteem, and may make an individual more likely to be a target of bullying.
In one of the few longitudinal studies to extend beyond one year, Juvonen and colleagues examined the relation between victimization 8 and academic achievement across the three years of middle school. Academic adjustment was measured by both year-end grades and teacher reports of engagement. These authors found that more self-reported victimization was related to lower school achievement from sixth to eighth grade.
For every 1-unit increase in victimization on a scale , GPA declined by 0. Other short-term longitudinal studies found similar results. For example, Nansel and colleagues found that being bullied in a given year grade 6 or 7 predicted poor academic outcomes the following year, after controlling for prior school adjustment and if they were previously targets of bullying or not. Similarly, Schwartz and colleagues reported a negative association for third and fourth grade children between victimization 9 and achievement 1 year later.
In addition, Baly and colleagues found that the cumulative impact of being bullied over 3 years from sixth grade to eighth grade had a negative impact on GPA and standardized test scores. However, other studies have not found such associations. For instance, Kochenderfer and Ladd found no relation between being bullied and subsequent academic achievement in their study of students assessed in the fall and spring of kindergarten, nor did Rueger and Jenkins in their study of seventh and eighth graders assessed in the fall and spring of one academic year. Feldman and colleagues also reported no association between being a target of bullying and academic achievement in their 5-year longitudinal study of youth ages Poor academic performance can also be a predictor of peer victimization Vaillancourt et al.
The authors found that poor writing performance in third grade predicted increased bullying behavior in fifth grade that was stable until the end of eighth grade. Make no mistake, if a child bullies, that tendency can stay with them their whole lives. Fortunately, some bullies do mature after they leave school. But sadly, you will also see young child bullies who become teenage bullies and then adult bullies. How does this behavior and lack of social skills affect them? These are the people who abuse their wives and kids emotionally and sometimes physically.
Bullies may also become criminals. Look at it this way: An anti-social personality disorder which is how criminals are classified refers to somebody who is willing to use aggression and violence to get his way. The criminal population is literally full of bullies who, among other things, never learned how to resolve conflicts and behave appropriately in social situations.
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Frustrated and exhausted by your child's behavior? Dawn Banner Rest of cast listed alphabetically: Sherry Crystal Christopher Bowman Larry Gray David Casiano Detective Branson Jasmine Fauscett Jackie's sister Kasha Fauscett Alexia Douglas Skip Francoeur Principal Bond Amy Graham Gladys Banner Chris Green Miss Tucker Kellee Hardy Jackie Douglas must face harassment from a bully every day. Add the first question. Was this review helpful to you? Yes No Report this. Audible Download Audio Books.