Long-term Effects of Childhood and Adolescent Bullying

This article discusses the long-term effects of childhood and adolescent bullying on physical and mental health, social relationships, and economic outcomes. It also suggests ways to prevent bullying and support victims.

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Bullying can be considered as a common childhood experience that has the capacity to
affect children coming from all income levels and even in different racial as well as ethnic
groups. Researchers have described bullying as the systemic abuse of power that exhibits an
aggressive behavior as well as the intentional harm mainly conducted by peers (Wolke &
Lereya,). It usually is carried out in a repeated manner and involves imbalance of power that may
be either perceived as well as actual and occurs between a bully and a victim. Although bullying
can be experienced in all cohorts of age of population, this assignment will be solely based on
childhood and adolescent bullying and the various impacts that associate with it.
Studies conducted over the long-term effects of bullying have shown many important
facts which have long lasting impacts on the child or adolescent when he has entered in
adulthood and is no more bullied in the present life. Researchers are of the opinion that bullying
in the childhood or even in the adolescent stage is intricately associated with poor physical as
well as mental health in adulthood. The victims suffer from reduced adaptation to different adult
roles that include being economically independent, developing long lasting relationships,
effective integration in work and many others. A study conducted by Takizawa et al. has shown
that the effects of childhood bullying can affect individuals even after four decades in adulthood
which may contain wide range of poor health, economic as well as social outcomes. They have
stated that male victims show poor employment as well as reduced net pay that their peer who
are not bullied. Such male victims were seen to be more depressed and had lower self esteem
from which the researchers have concluded that bullying in childhood retain their association
with poor cognitive, mental and physical outcomes even after 40 years of exposure. Moreover,
they also stated that such bullied victims were also seen to be associated with poor social

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relationships, lower perceived quality of life and even economic difficulties. They are also of the
opinion that bullying also exposes individuals to greater alcohol dependence.
Pondering over the statistical data conducted over a number of countries, depressing
results were found. Childhood bullying has been found to be associated with substantial cost of
individuals, their families and even with the society at large. Researchers have estimated that if
childhood bullying can be prevented in USA, it would result in lifetime cost benefits of over $
1.4 million per individual (Dale et al.). When such study was conducted in the nation of United
Kingdom, it was seen that over 16000 young people between the age of 11 and 15 were
estimated to be absent from the state school with bullying to be the main reason of their absence
(Scott et al.). About 78000 individuals were absent with bullying to be their confirmed cause of
absence. Most of the children are seen to suffer in silence without disclosing the matter to their
parents or teachers due to shame. In such paper, about 50% of the children say that they would
rarely or never tell their parents while 35 and 60% say that they would never tell their teacher.
Individuals who have undergone victimization by bullying also shows suicide ideation as
well as suicide attempts due to excessive depression, mental pressure and emotional turmoil.
When studies were examined which were based on the associations between victimization and
direct self-injurious bullying behavior, interesting results were revealed. Klomek et al. has tried
to found the association between three type of victimization like the physical, verbal as well as
relational and that of additional risk factors like depression, anxiety, suicide ideation, loneliness,
alcohol intake, drug compensation and others. Depression but not anxiety was found to be
associated with verbal and relational victimization with resulted in direct-self-injurious behavior.
However, they also put forward a number of protective factors where researchers stated that
students who had parent and peer support and were possessing pro-social behaviors were seen to

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be at a lower risk for direct-self-injurious behavior in comparison to those who were not
receiving any support. Therefore, it is highly beneficial for the parents, schools and the society to
understand whether their wards are undergoing stress due to bullying or not and initiate an open
discussion with them assuring them of compassion and empathy and empowering them to
overcome the issues.
Schools across the nation are mainly seen to adopt zero-tolerance policies to bullying,
weapons, gangs, drugs and violence after several incidents of school violence became the
headlines in the news in different nations. Schools are manly seen to adopt law enforcement
strategies rather than educational models for combating school bullying and violence.
Researchers like Gerlinger and Wo had commented that these makes the schools look like
nothing but detention centers rather than safe learning environments. Therefore, they are
suggesting a second approach based on school climate theory stating that schools that show high
authoritative discipline with high structure and support will be more advantageous in reducing
the bullying symptoms. Schools orienting more rule oriented and teacher driven bullying
prevention mechanisms will have more positive outcomes than strict security approaches (Low et
al.)
From the entire discussion above, it becomes quite clear that children and adolescents
who are exposed to bullying face different types of mental as well as physical issues that destroy
their quality of life. Such impact may affect individuals in their adult stage as well when they get
exposed to economic crisis, low self esteem, poor relation sharing with partners, poor physical
conditions and ailments an many others. Moreover, it is also seen that many of the individuals
even may get exposed in suicide ideation and suicide attempts which results in threatening of the
lives. Therefore, parents, peers and societies should develop an environment where they can

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reveal their concerns and get support from them. Such support can act protective factors for the
individuals. Moreover, schools should develop second approach of developing a school
environment of high disciplines and support with proper teacher based interventions rather than
security based services so that bullying can be reduced in the institutions.

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References:
Dale, Jeremy, Rachel Russell, and Dieter Wolke. "Intervening in primary care against childhood
bullying: an increasingly pressing public health need." Journal of the Royal Society of
Medicine 107.6 (2014): 219-223.
Gerlinger, Julie, and James C. Wo. "Preventing school bullying: Should schools prioritize an
authoritative school discipline approach over security measures?." Journal of school
violence 15.2 (2016): 133-157.
Klomek, Anat Brunstein, Avigal Snir, Alan Apter, Vladimir Carli, Camilla Wasserman, Gergö
Hadlaczky, Christin, Hoven "Association between victimization by bullying and direct self
injurious behavior among adolescence in Europe: a ten-country study." European child &
adolescent psychiatry 25.11 (2016): 1183-1193.
Low, Sabina, Mark J. Van Ryzin, Eric C. Brown, Brian H. Smith, and Kevin Haggerty
"Engagement matters: lessons from assessing classroom implementation of steps to respect: a
bullying prevention program over a one-year period." Prevention science 15.2 (2014): 165-176.
Klomek, Anat Brunstein, Avigal Snir, Alan Apter, Vladimir Carli, Camilla Wasserman, Gergö
Hadlaczky, Christina, Hoven and Brunner "Young people who are being bullied–do they want
general practice support?." BMC family practice17.1 (2016): 116.
Takizawa, Ryu, Barbara Maughan, and Louise Arseneault. "Adult health outcomes of childhood
bullying victimization: evidence from a five-decade longitudinal British birth cohort." American
journal of psychiatry 171.7 (2014): 777-784.

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Wolke, Dieter, and Suzet Tanya Lereya. "Long-term effects of bullying." Archives of disease in
childhood 100.9 (2015): 879-885.