Bullying is an issue that shouldn't be taken lightly and it isn’t. However, we tend to oversee the issue once the bullying stops after the kids pass out from their adolescent years. But that is exactly where the problem lies. Children who have suffered severe and long-lasting victimization tend to suffer from depression, anxiety and suicidal thoughts later on than teens who weren’t routinely victimized by other kids, a Canadian study suggests.
As part of the research, adolescents who suffered chronic tormenting by their peers were more than twice as likely to be depressed and more than three times more likely to be anxious or seriously consider suicide, the study found. “We found that exposure to peer victimization decreases by the end of childhood,” said lead study author Marie-Claude Geoffroy, a psychiatry researcher at McGill University in Montreal. “However, the 15 percent of adolescents exposed to the most severe levels of victimization when they entered kindergarten were still exposed to the highest levels in high school,” Geoffroy added.
Overall, about 7 percent of the teens exposed to little or no victimization as kids had depression, compared with almost 18 percent of adolescents who had suffered severe bullying by their peers, researchers reported. At the same time, 7 percent of teens with little or no exposure to bullying had general anxiety, compared with 20 percent of youth who had been constantly victimized by their peers. These bullied kids are also more likely to experience social anxiety, eating problems, conduct issues and behaviour challenges, the study found.
"To avoid this, parents should ask kids about bullying, and let them know that if they experience this, they aren’t alone," said Dr Matthew Davis of the Ann & Robert Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago. “If your children are being bullied, focus on supporting their sense of self-worth, to help nurture their self-esteem despite bullying,” Davis added.
