Childhood bullying linked to distrust, mental health issues in adolescence
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Key takeaways:
- Experts suggest implementing school-based programs to foster trust.
- A second study found that teenagers with LGBTQ identities were likely to have emotional distress because of biased-based bullying.
Childhood bullying was linked to distrust as a teenager and mental health issues in late adolescence according to research published earlier this week.
The study, published in Nature Mental Health and led by researchers from UCLA Health and the University of Glasgow, found teenagers who reported a distrust of others because of childhood bullying were much more likely to have significant mental health problems into adulthood compared with their peers.
“There are few public health topics more important than youth mental health right now,” George M. Slavich, PhD, director of evaluation and evidence at UCLA’s UCLA-UCSF ACEs Aware Family Resilience Network Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior, said in a release. “In order to help teens reach their fullest potential, we need to invest in research that identifies risk factors for poor health and that translates this knowledge into prevention programs that can improve lifelong health and resilience.”
Slavich and colleagues examined data on 10,000 young people drawn from the U.K.’s Millennium Cohort Study, which surveyed its patients for 20 years from late childhood to late adolescence. At age 11 years, the patients were asked how often they were bullied by other children, whereas at age 14 years, they were asked about interpersonal distrust, and at age 17 years, about mental health difficulties.
Ultimately, the researchers found that 44% of adolescents who experienced bullying that fostered high levels of distrust were likely to subsequently develop clinically significant mental health difficulties, whereas only 13% of youth reporting low distrust levels were likely to subsequently experience such difficulties.
“What these data suggest is that we really need school-based programs that help foster a sense of interpersonal trust at the level of the classroom and school,” Slavich said. “One way to do that would be to develop evidence-based programs that are especially focused on the transition to high school and college, and that frame school as an opportunity to develop close, long-lasting relationships.”
Issues of bullying also played a role in a study published late last month in Pediatrics, which found that youth with similar social positions of race, ethnicity, sexual orientation and gender have much greater levels of emotional distress if they have experienced bias-based bullying, such as racist, homophobic or transphobic bullying.
The authors examined data from the 2019 Minnesota Student Survey on 80,456 students in grades 9 and 11. The researchers found that LGBQ identities (90%) and transgender, gender-diverse, and questioning identities (54%) were common among the highest prevalence groups for emotional distress, with bias-based bullying characterizing 82% of the highest prevalence groups. In groups without bias-based bullying, however, emotional distress rates were 20% to 60% lower, at an average of 38.8%.
“We hear a lot about mental health disparities affecting minority youth, and a common misinterpretation is that 'those kids' have problems,” Marla Eisenberg, ScD, MPH, a professor at the University of Minnesota Medical School and faculty with the School of Public Health, said in a release. “This study really shows that when kids are harassed or bullied for just being who they are — that's the problem, that's where we need to make changes.”
References:
Eisenberg ME, et al. Pediatrics. 2024;doi: 10.1542/peds.2023-061647.
Study finds childhood bullying linked to distrust and mental health problems in adolescence https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/1034053. Published Feb. 13, 2024. Accessed Feb. 16, 2024.
Tsomokos D, et al. Nat Ment Health. 2024;doi: 10.1038/s44220-024-00203-7.
U of M study finds bias-based bullying amplifies emotional distress in youth with multiple marginalized social positions. https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/1034276. Published Feb. 13, 2024. Accessed Feb. 16, 2024.
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