Bullying Girls – Changes after Brief Strategic Family Therapy: A Randomized, Prospective, Controlled Trial with One-Year Follow-Up

Abstract

Background: Many girls bully others. They are conspicuous because of their risk-taking behavior, increased anger, problematic interpersonal relationships and poor quality of life. Our aim was to determine the efficacy of brief strategic family therapy (BSFT) for bullying-related behavior, anger reduction, improvement of interpersonal relationships, and improvement of health-related quality of life in girls who bully, and to find out whether their expressive aggression correlates with their distinctive psychological features. Methods: 40 bullying girls were recruited from the general population: 20 were randomly selected for 3 months of BSFT. Follow-up took place 12 months after the therapy had ended. The results of treatment were examined using the Adolescents’ Risk-taking Behavior Scale (ARBS), the State-Trait Anger Expression Inventory (STAXI), the Inventory of Interpersonal Problems (IIP-D), and the SF-36 Health Survey (SF-36). Results: In comparison with the control group (CG) (according to the intent-to-treat principle), bullying behavior in the BSFT group was reduced (BSFT-G from n = 20 to n = 6; CG from n = 20 to n = 18, p = 0.05) and statistically significant changes in all risk-taking behaviors (ARBS), on most STAXI, IIP-D, and SF-36 scales were observed after BSFT. The reduction in expressive aggression (Anger-Out scale of the STAXI) correlated with the reduction on several scales of the ARBS, IIP-D, and SF-36. Follow-up a year later showed relatively stable events. Conclusions: Our findings suggest that bullying girls suffer from psychological and social problems which may be reduced by the use of BSFT. Expressive aggression in girls appears to correlate with several types of risk-taking behavior and interpersonal problems, as well as with health-related quality of life.

The Effects of Family Therapies for Adolescent Delinquency and Substance Abuse: A Meta‐analysis

“…We focused only on the heterogeneity statistics in the influence analysis involving all studies in the review. The “leave‐one‐out” analysis indicated that three studies were influential with respect to heterogeneity (Dennis et al., 2004; Nickel, Luley et al., 2006; Timmons‐Mitchell, Bender, Kishna, & Mitchell, 2006). Removing the studies one at a time reduced I 2 from 52% to between 38% and 44%.…”

“…The aggregate effect sizes in the influence analysis ranged from 0.50 to 0.89 (none were statistically significant) whereas τ 2 ranged from 0.02 to 0.33. Removing Nickel, Luely et al. (2006) reduced to .50 (a 29% reduction) and removing Szapocznik et al.…”

“…(1989) increased to .90 (a 29% increase). Further, removing Nickel, Luely et al. (2006) reduced τ 2 to 0.02 (an 88% reduction) and removing Szapocznik et al.…”

“…(2006) increased τ 2 to 0.31 (an 82% increase) and 0.32 (an 88% increase), respectively. Because removing any study within this analysis had a large impact on the results, we only considered Nickel, Luely et al. (2006) to be an outlier in subsequent analyses because it was also an outlier in the overall analysis.…”

Taking Brief Strategic Family Therapy from Bench to Trench: Evidence Generation Across Translational Phases

“…BSFT, relative to supportive listening, reduced substance use, bullying, and sexually risky behaviors while it improved mental health problems in girls (Nickel, Luley, et al, 2006). …”