Health Consequences Of Bullying Research Articles

Bullying: An Update.

Bullying is a complex and widespread public health issue that affects children of all ages and adults. For decades, childhood bullying has been viewed as an unpleasant but generally harmless rite of passage that carries with it few long-term consequences. Research has increasingly documented the serious and long-term behavioral and health consequences of bullying. This article addresses several features of bullying including epidemiology, psychological and physical impact, and the role of health care providers in bullying detection, intervention, and prevention.

Bullying and Children who are Deaf or Hard-of-hearing: A Scoping Review.

The goal of this scoping review is to evaluate and synthesize the published research regarding bullying and children who are deaf or hard-of-hearing (DHH). The Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses extension for scoping review (PRISMA-ScR) statement was used as the guideline for conducting this review. This review included studies assessing pediatric (0-21 years) DHH children. Seventy records underwent the initial title-abstract screening, 33 underwent full-text review, and 23 studies met inclusion criteria. During the data extraction process, an additional six were excluded, resulting in a total of 17 evaluated studies. Of the 17 studies assessed, nine compared peer victimization of DHH children and their hearing peers. Of those, seven studies reported that hearing loss (HL) is significantly associated with increased victimization. Two studies found that HL is significantly associated with decreased bullying perpetration. Notably, bullying in DHH children was not associated with a visible sign of disability, such as a hearing assistive device. Rather, variables such as educational setting, parental, and peer support are more likely to mediate bullying in this population. DHH children have a higher risk of peer victimization and may bully others less often than their hearing peers. Studies described the health consequences of bullying in children who are DHH, including sleep issues and anxiety. These consequences may have implications for the patients' overall HL management. Additional research regarding bullying interventions and prevention in this population should be conducted. NA Laryngoscope, 131:1884-1892, 2021.

Gender Matters: Workplace Bullying, Gender, and Mental Health.

The aim of this study was to examine the role of gender in the process of workplace bullying. In particular, we examined how gender affects reported prevalence rates and health consequences of bullying. In addition, we pay particular attention to if the measurement method – self-labelling or behavioural experience methods – affects potential gender differences. A longitudinal study, with two measurement points 18 months apart, was conducted in Sweden (n = 1854 at T1; n = 1096 at T2). It was a probability sample out of a population of all 3.3 million people in Sweden working at workplaces with ten or more employees. The results showed a slightly higher tendency for women to self-label as bullied (8% vs. 6%), while a higher proportion of men than women could be labelled as bullied based on the negative acts they had been exposed to (21% vs. 14%). Exposure to negative acts was associated with more subsequent mental health problems for both men and women, whereas self-labelling was associated with mental health problems for men only. Mental health problems at baseline also increased the risk of bullying for both men and women; however, the measurement method affected if the effect was stronger for men or women. Overall, the study advances our understanding of the role of gender in bullying, in particular highlighting the importance of the measurement method for understanding such gender differences.

Framing bullying as a health risk: Null effects on young adults’ support for anti-bullying policies

AbstractGiven extensive research underscoring the deleterious effects of bullying on youth adjustment, anti-bullying policies and programming are critical public health priorities. However, strategies that increase public support for anti-bullying causes are not well understood. This experiment assessed the influence of “bullying messaging” on support for anti-bullying policies. Specifically, I investigated whether learning about the health consequences of bullying, as opposed to its prevalence or educational impact, increased individuals’ support of anti-bullying policies. Participants (n = 329) were randomly assigned to one of four conditions where they read a brief summary about bullying research; conditions varied by whether the research documented the: a) prevalence of bullying b) mental health consequences of bullying c) physical health consequences of bullying or d) academic consequences of bullying. Results indicated that participants endorsed high levels of support for anti-bullying policies, regardless of experimental condition, and that policies aimed at increasing K-12 mental health resources were most supported.

Do adolescent risk behaviors mediate health and school bullying? Testing the stress process and general strain frameworks

Adolescent bullying is a significant public health issue in the United States. The health consequences of bullying may vary, however, according to the social position and characteristics of victims and bullies within the bullying subculture. For example, research suggests that bully involved youth are more likely to engage in risky health behaviors, including social withdrawal, tobacco, and alcohol use. Yet, the extent to which health outcomes are shaped by involvements in bullying or the risk behaviors associated with bullying remains unclear. In this study we assess the extent to which risk behaviors mediate the links between health outcomes of bully-involved youth using data from the Health Behavior of School Aged Children 2005–2006 Study (N = 8066). School-level fixed-effects regression models assessed whether risk behaviors mediate relationships between bullying statuses and somatic and depressive symptoms. Results show that mediational risk behavior pathways vary across outcomes for youth situated differently in the bullying subculture, with substantially more mediation for bullies than victims. This study advances the current bullying and health research by accounting for risk behavior pathways linking bullying and health.

Understanding and defining bullying - adolescents' own views.

BackgroundThe negative consequences of peer-victimization on children and adolescents are major public health concerns which have been subjected to extensive research. Given all efforts made to analyze and estimate the social and health consequences of peer-victimization, the adolescents’ own experiences and understandings have had surprisingly little impact on the definition of bullying. Therefore, the aim of the current study is to explore adolescents’ definitions of bullying.MethodsA questionnaire study (n = 128) and four focus group interviews (n = 21) were conducted among students aged 13 and 15. First, gender and age differences were analyzed with respect to what behaviors are considered bullying (questionnaire data). Second, analysis of what bullying is (focus group interviews) was conducted using qualitative content analysis.ResultsThe adolescents own understanding and definition of bullying didn’t just include the traditional criteria of repetition and power imbalance, but also a criterion based on the health consequences of bullying. The results showed that a single but hurtful or harmful incident also could be considered bullying irrespective of whether the traditional criteria were fulfilled or not. Further, girls and older students had a more inclusive view of bullying and reported more types of behaviors as bullying compared to boys and younger students.ConclusionsThe results of the current study adds to the existing literature by showing that adolescents consider the victim’s experience of hurt and harm as a criterion for defining bullying and not only as consequences of bullying. This may be of special relevance for the identification and classification of bullying incidents on the internet where devastating consequences have been reported from single incidents and the use of the traditional criteria of intent, repetition and power imbalance may not be as relevant as for traditional bullying. It implies that the traditional criteria included in most definitions of bullying may not fully reflect adolescents’ understanding and definition of bullying. Assessments of bullying behaviors that ask adolescents to strictly adhere to the traditional definition of bullying might not identify all adolescents experiencing peer victimization and therefore not provide estimates of prevalence rates reflecting adolescents’ own understanding of bullying.