Bullying is a scourge that has not yet been eradicated despite its disastrous consequences for the health and emotional well-being of those affected, as indicated by a new study that has been co-directed by researchers from UCLA Health and the University of Glasgow that reveals that children who have suffered bullying and become distrustful adolescents because of this are much more likely to suffer from mental health problems both during adolescence and when they reach adulthood.
Researchers used data from 10,000 children in the United Kingdom who had been studied for almost 20 years as part of the Millennium Cohort Study to determine whether there was a link between peer bullying, interpersonal distrust and the later development of health problems. mental, such as anxiety, depression, hyperactivity and anger.
They found that adolescents who were bullied at age 11 and who in turn developed greater interpersonal mistrust at age 14 were about 3.5 times more likely to experience clinically significant mental health problems at age 17, compared to those who developed less distrust.
The findings have been published in Nature Mental Health and could help schools and other institutions develop new evidence-based interventions to counter the negative effects of bullying on mental health, said Dr. George Slavich, who directs the Laboratory of Stress Assessment and Research at UCLA Health and is the lead author of the study.
Identify factors that harm the mental health of adolescents
“There are few public health issues more important right now than the mental health of young people,” Slavich says. “To help adolescents reach their full potential, we need to invest in research that identifies risk factors for poor health and translates this knowledge into prevention programs that can improve health and resilience across the lifespan.”
Youth mental health has become a public health issue, and in this new study, researchers looked at this alarming trend from the perspective of social security theory, which hypothesizes that social threats, such as Bullying impacts mental health in part because it instills the belief that other people cannot be trusted, or that the world is a hostile, dangerous, or unpredictable place.
Previous research has identified associations between bullying and mental and behavioral health problems among young people, including its impact on substance abuse, depression, anxiety, self-harm and suicidal thoughts. However, the follow-up over time that characterizes this study makes it the first to confirm this hypothesis, that is, how bullying leads to mistrust and, in turn, mental health problems in late adolescence. .
“We need school programs that help foster a sense of interpersonal trust in the classroom and school to protect the mental health of adolescents”
Slavich said that when people develop clinically significant mental health problems during adolescence, it can increase the risk that they will experience both mental and physical health problems throughout their lives if they are not addressed early. The authors analyzed other factors that could have influenced such as the type of diet, the quality of sleep, or the practice of physical activity, but they only found that interpersonal mistrust related bullying with a greater risk of experiencing mental health problems at 17 years.
“What this data suggests is that we really need school programs that help foster a sense of interpersonal trust in the classroom and school,” Slavich said. “One way to do this would be to develop evidence-based programs that focus especially on the transition to high school and college, and that frame school as an opportunity to develop close, lasting relationships,” he concludes.
