Bullying Victimization and Trauma

Abstract

Bullying victimization and trauma research traditions operate quite separately. Hence, it is unclear from the literature whether bullying victimization should be considered as a form of interpersonal trauma. We review studies that connect bullying victimization with symptoms of PTSD, and in doing so, demonstrate that a conceptual understanding of the consequences of childhood bullying needs to be framed within a developmental perspective. We discuss two potential diagnoses that ought to be considered in the context of bullying victimization: (1) developmental trauma disorder, which was suggested but not accepted as a new diagnosis in the DSM-5 and (2) complex post-traumatic stress disorder, which has been included in the ICD-11. Our conclusion is that these frameworks capture the complexity of the symptoms associated with bullying victimization better than PTSD. We encourage practitioners to understand how exposure to bullying interacts with development at different ages when addressing the consequences for targets and when designing interventions that account for the duration, intensity, and sequelae of this type of interpersonal trauma.

Sibling, Peer, and Cyber Bullying Among Children and Adolescents: Co-occurrence and Implications for Their Adjustment

“…Finally, above all, our results highlight the importance of investigating multiple bullying forms across contexts simultaneously. Mapping onto previous work, we too show that bullying as a trauma ( Idsoe et al, 2021 ; McKay et al, 2021 ), may be most harmful when experiences across multiple contexts, as this means that young people have no safe place to escape ( Dantchev et al, 2019 ).…”

“…There is a breadth of proposed mechanisms that have been put forward in an effort to explain why bullying may be associated with poor child adjustment. Firstly, there is a growing body of empirical work demonstrating that bullying should be considered as an additional form of childhood trauma ( Idsoe et al, 2021 ; McKay et al, 2021 ), similarly contributing toward cognitive and physiological changes that are directly linked toward the development of poor physical and mental health ( Arseneault, 2017 ). On par with this, sleep problems may be understood as both a potential consequence of bullying involvement, but also as a causative factor that can contribute to the occurrence of bullying ( Donoghue and Meltzer, 2018 ).…”

Psychometric properties, validity and insights of the School Bullying Questionnaire (CIE-A) in secondary schools of the Valencian Community (Spain)

“…With the aim of testing the directional coherence and significance of the associations among them and each CIE-A factor, bivariate (Spearman’s rho ) correlations were used. These non-parametric correlations are preferrable over Pearson’s r correlations if the data is non-normally distributed, and/or its nature is ordinal [ 83 ], as it was the case of this study.…”

Relationship between Direct and Relational Bullying and Emotional Well-being among Adolescents: The role of Self-compassion

“…Suffering from bullying has been systematically associated with several psychopathological symptoms and indicators of distress. Victims are likely to report higher levels of depression, anxiety and suicidal ideation, and Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) symptoms in comparison to non-victimized students (Idsoe et al, 2021;Moore et al, 2017). Meanwhile, longitudinal studies have proved that these problems might extend into adulthood (Lereya et al, 2015;Moore et al, 2017).…”