A longitudinal twin study of victimization and loneliness from childhood to young adulthood.

Timothy Matthews,Louise Arseneault,Andrea Danese,Terrie E Moffitt,Avshalom Caspi,Helen L Fisher

doi:10.1017/s0954579420001005

Abstract

The present study used a longitudinal and discordant twin design to explore in depth the developmental associations between victimization and loneliness from mid-childhood to young adulthood. The data were drawn from the Environmental Risk (E-Risk) Longitudinal Twin Study, a birth cohort of 2,232 individuals born in England and Wales during 1994-1995. Diverse forms of victimization were considered, differing across context, perpetrator, and timing of exposure. The results indicated that exposure to different forms of victimization was associated with loneliness in a dose-response manner. In childhood, bullying victimization was uniquely associated with loneliness, over and above concurrent psychopathology, social isolation, and genetic risk. Moreover, childhood bullying victimization continued to predict loneliness in young adulthood, even in the absence of ongoing victimization. Within-twin pair analyses further indicated that this longitudinal association was explained by genetic confounds. In adolescence, varied forms of victimization were correlated with young adult loneliness, with maltreatment, neglect, and cybervictimization remaining robust to controls for genetic confounds. These findings indicate that vulnerability to loneliness in victimized young people varies according to the specific form of victimization in question, and also to the developmental period in which it was experienced.

Highlights

A large body of evidence confirms that children and adolescents who are exposed to victimization face increased risk of diverse negative outcomes by early adulthood, including psychopathology (Bowes, 2015; Jaffee, 2017; Norman et al, 2012; Schaefer et al, 2018), lower educational and career attainment (Brown & Taylor, 2008; Currie & Widom, 2010), and risk markers for inflammatory disease (Baldwin et al, 2018; Copeland et al, 2014; Rasmussen et al, 2019)
When concurrent depression and anxiety at age 12 years were controlled for, only bullying remained independently associated with loneliness
When social isolation between 5–12 years was controlled for in a post hoc analysis, childhood bullying remained associated with loneliness at age 12

Summary

Introduction

A large body of evidence confirms that children and adolescents who are exposed to victimization face increased risk of diverse negative outcomes by early adulthood, including psychopathology (Bowes, 2015; Jaffee, 2017; Norman et al, 2012; Schaefer et al, 2018), lower educational and career attainment (Brown & Taylor, 2008; Currie & Widom, 2010), and risk markers for inflammatory disease (Baldwin et al, 2018; Copeland et al, 2014; Rasmussen et al, 2019). The timing of the exposure during development may play a role in shaping the associations between victimization and loneliness: certain types of victimization may exert distinct effects when experienced in childhood versus adolescence (Logan-Greene, Nurius, Hooven, & Thompson, 2015; Troop-Gordon, 2017). These considerations necessitate longitudinal study designs, with repeated measures spanning multiple developmental stages, to disentangle the temporal priority of associations and test the possibility of “critical periods” for victimization exposure. This method has allowed the robustness of the association between victimization and mental health to be stringently tested (Jaffee, Caspi, Moffitt, & Taylor, 2004; Pingault et al, 2018; Schaefer et al, 2018)

Aim of study

Participants

Results

Discussion

Limitations