Long-Term Impacts of Bullying on Mental and Social Health

Introduction to Bullying

Bullying is an undesirable, hostile behavior exhibited by adolescents due to perceived — and sometimes real — power imbalances. It is a repeated behavior, or one that has the potential to recur over time. Both the bullies and those who are bullied can develop long-term problems. For a child's behavior to be classified as bullying, it must be hostile and involve the following elements:

Power imbalance: Children who bully make use of their physical strength, access to embarrassing information, or social popularity to harm or control other children. These imbalances in power can shift over time and across circumstances, even when they involve the same individuals.

Repetition: Bullying behaviors do not occur just once — they recur over time.

Bullying behaviors include actions such as threatening others, physical and verbal attacks, spreading rumors, or deliberately excluding someone from a group activity (Stopbullying.gov, n.d.). It is hostile behavior that inflicts intentional and repeated harm in the form of injury or discomfort. Bullying can take the form of physical contact, words alone, or subtle actions. In most cases, the individual being bullied cannot protect themselves and has done nothing to provoke the bullying (APA, 2016).

Bullying is a deliberate way of harming and humiliating others, and it tends to be a long-lasting behavioral pattern, largely because bullies often get their way — at least initially. Bullies are not born; they are made. Bullying begins at a very early age, often when parents fail to manage a toddler's early hostility effectively. Without victims, there would be no bullies, and bullies do not target just anyone — their victims are mostly people who appear frightened even before the bullying begins. Bullies cause problems in their workplaces and relationships as they grow older. Most experts believe that bullying is becoming more prevalent because more children are growing up without experiences that help them develop essential social skills. There are many reports of a decline in free play with peers, yet it is well established that playing with peers helps children develop the skills that make them likeable to others their age and teaches them how best to handle social challenges (Understanding Bullying, 2016).

School bullying has both short-term and long-term effects on the physical and mental health of children. A number of new programs around the world are aimed at containing bullying, though previous research — including narrative reviews and meta-analyses of anti-bullying programs — is limited. A proper definition of school bullying encompasses several key elements: verbal, physical, or psychological intimidation aimed at causing fear, harm, or distress to a victim; a power imbalance, with a stronger child or group of children intimidating less powerful peers; and recurring incidents between the same individuals over an extended period.

School bullying can occur on school premises or while students are traveling to or from school. When two individuals of equal strength — verbal, physical, or psychological — engage in mutual intimidation, it is no longer classified as bullying (Farrington & Ttofi, 2010). This paper examines the prolonged effects, outcomes, and impacts of bullying.

Long-Term Impacts on Victims

The experience of being bullied can cause significant long-term damage to victims. This is well documented and supported by research across multiple disciplines. Suffering physical harm in an attempt to avoid prolonged damage is not necessary — words and common gestures alone are sufficient to cause lasting harm. The age-old saying that "sticks and stones may break my bones, but names will never hurt me" is, in many respects, precisely backwards. Physical injuries inflicted during a fight tend to heal relatively quickly, especially when they occur during the growing years. The deeper wounds suffered by bullying victims are far more difficult to heal because they damage the victim's self-concept, personality, and sense of identity. Bullying is essentially an effort to instill self-hatred and fear. Repeated victimization destroys a person's ability to see themselves as capable, desirable, and effective (Dombeck, 2014).

There are two main harmful outcomes that result from learning to see yourself as undesirable and incapable. The first is that you become increasingly susceptible to depression, anger, or bitterness. Being bullied makes you feel unworthy — to yourself — and convinces you that the world cannot keep you safe.

Being a victim of bullying lowers self-confidence and undermines belief in one's abilities. It makes a person feel unsafe in the world, particularly when being bullied by someone physically stronger. When a victim is repeatedly unable to reduce or stop the bullying, learned helplessness begins to set in — the belief that nothing you do can help you, however hard you try, even when this belief is entirely unfounded. This sets the stage for depression and hopelessness. As victims accept their perceived helplessness, they simultaneously absorb how bullies see them, coming to believe that others view them as pathetic, weak, and worthless. Because of how identity is formed, victims may come to believe that whatever the bullies say about them must be true.

Identity is fundamentally a social phenomenon. Other people contribute meaningfully to how we see ourselves. This is especially true when people are still young and have not yet had the life experiences that reveal their capabilities and strengths. Much of what society recognizes as identity — even among adults — is actually a form of "other-confidence": the confidence most people derive from those around them and from the messages, subtle and overt, that others send about their worth and value. This is a central reason why people seek to belong to groups — group membership generates positive feelings about oneself. Bullying makes victims feel they do not belong and that they are inferior to others in many ways.

When a person is beaten or publicly humiliated, it becomes increasingly difficult to dismiss the reality of being treated as an outsider. Only an exceptionally confident or well-supported individual can avoid internalizing what a bully says and resist turning the bullying inward. Conversely, it is easy for victims to begin thinking of themselves as worthless, pathetic, weak, and incompetent — thoughts that can lead to depression or, when combined with fantasies of revenge, to rage and desires for retribution (Dombeck, 2014).

While the first harmful outcome of bullying — a wounded self-concept — manifests almost immediately, the second unfolds more slowly over time. A wounded self-concept makes it difficult to believe in yourself, and without self-belief, it becomes harder to overcome challenges and difficult situations. Low academic performance can occur when victims of bullying succumb to depression or become demoralized. It also occurs when victims begin avoiding school to escape their bullies. These low academic results are not, in themselves, the primary problem. The real concern is that when poor academic performance becomes pronounced or persists for a long time, victims lose opportunities to advance their education and, eventually, their employment prospects. Retrospective accounts document cases of people leaving school entirely to escape ongoing bullying, which must have substantially limited their employment options as adults. Dropping out of school is one dramatic illustration of how bullying can derail an adolescent's development, but depression and anger resulting from bullying can cause developmental harm in many other ways as well.

Sensitive children are almost inevitably singled out for mockery; those who cry easily are the easiest targets. Because of how they are treated, many sensitive children come to view their sensitivity as a liability and attempt to suppress it or redirect it into anger and desires for revenge. This strategy rarely works in childhood. Reinventing oneself without moving to a new environment is always difficult, and the consequences can follow a person into adult life — when these same individuals, now adults, find themselves avoidant, cynical, or angry, and struggle in their romantic relationships as a result. A related form of damage occurs when bullied children internalize negative messages about aspects of their identity that make them different — their membership in minority groups, their sexual orientation, or their religious affiliation. In these situations, bullying functions as a form of peer pressure to reject parts of one's own identity that are not inherently shameful but that mark the individual as different, creating a potentially lifelong internal tension.

The following list summarizes some of the key impacts of bullying on those who are bullied:

Short-term:

• Anger
• Greater incidence of illness
• Anxiety
• Avoidance of situations where bullying may occur
• Poorer academic grades than peers who are not bullied
• Suicidal feelings and thoughts (in one British study, bullying was associated with approximately 20% of participants who attempted suicide, compared to 3% among those who had not been bullied)

Long-term:

• Reduced job opportunities
• Lingering bitterness and anger, and a desire for revenge
• Difficulty trusting others
• Interpersonal difficulties, including avoidance of and anxiety in social situations
• Greater tendency toward social isolation
• Viewing oneself as an easy victim; excessive sensitivity; emotional guardedness
• Self-esteem problems and an inability to think of oneself positively
• Higher rates of ongoing victimization and bullying (Dombeck, 2014)

Bullying affects everyone involved — the bully, the person being bullied, and those who witness it. It is associated with a number of negative outcomes related to substance use, mental health, and suicide. It is important to speak with children to determine whether bullying — or any other issue — is a concern for them.

Effects on Bullies and Bystanders

Kids who are bullied experience negative physical and mental health consequences. Those who are bullied are most likely to experience the following:

• Anxiety and depression, increased feelings of loneliness and sadness, changes in eating and sleep patterns, and loss of interest in activities they once enjoyed. Some of these issues may persist well into adulthood.
• Physical health complaints.
• Reduced academic achievement — lower GPAs and standardized test scores — and decreased participation in school activities. They are more likely to skip, miss, or drop out of school.
• In some cases, children seek revenge through violent means. In approximately 12 to 15 school shooting cases during the 1990s, the perpetrators had a history of being bullied.

Kids who bully others are similarly at risk for engaging in other violent and risky behaviors well into adulthood. Children who bully are more likely to:

• Abuse alcohol and drugs during adolescence and adulthood
• Vandalize property, engage in fighting, and drop out of school
• Engage in early sexual activity
• Accumulate traffic citations and criminal convictions as adults
• Abuse romantic partners, spouses, or children as adults

Bystanders — children who witness bullying — are more likely to:

• Use alcohol, tobacco, and other drugs at higher rates
• Experience greater mental health difficulties, including anxiety and depression
• Skip or miss school (Stopbullying.gov, 2016)

Conclusion

Even though many intervention programs have been developed over the past two decades to address bullying, only a few have produced the desired results. Bullying researchers have emphasized the importance of understanding as many bullying-related factors as possible, along with key variables related to school environments, in order to make intervention programs more effective. Researchers are increasingly interested in identifying where bullying is most likely to occur. Evidence points to school bathrooms, physical education classrooms, playgrounds, buses, cafeterias, and regular classrooms as especially high-risk locations.

In everyday life, the group represents the most important context for a person's personal development. For children, the family is the first group in which they learn fundamental attitudinal and behavioral norms. School is a secondary group in which they learn how to behave and interact with others in their community. Any destructive dynamic within school groups interferes with students' normal development. Longitudinal studies indicate that: (1) people who were bullied at school experience difficulty integrating into their work environments in adulthood, and (2) approximately 60% of those who bullied their peers at school go on to commit crimes as adults. Additionally, those who assisted bullies experienced psychological problems of their own, including anxiety about becoming victims themselves. Social problems accompanied these psychological difficulties as well. Students who endured bullying became afraid of their school environment and stopped attending classes, contributing to rising dropout rates. In some cases, students had to transfer to different schools in order to continue their education.

In conclusion, any group defined by bullying behavior fails to achieve its primary purpose: helping students build their own distinct identities. From this perspective, bullying is a deeply destructive force — not only for the individuals it harms, but for the healthy functioning and development of groups as a whole (Chirilă, 2010).