Bullying makes you sick, but not who is bullying yourself

Bullying endangers the health long term

05/13/2014

Bullying endangers the health in the long run. As researchers from the United Kingdom and the United States report, people who have been bullied as children and adolescents by others, even in adulthood show signs of chronic inflammation in the body. However, health seems to be beneficial if children bully themselves.

Bullying harms long term health
Millions of people in Germany are being bullied. About every third adult is affected in this country, as from a study of the „Alliance Against Cyberbullying“ evident. Bullying not only endangers the health directly but also in the long term. Like scientists from Great Britain and the USA now in the „Proceedings“ the US National Academy of Sciences („PNAS“), people who have been humiliated or harassed by others as schoolchildren and adolescents show signs of chronic inflammation in their bodies during adulthood. It is also interesting that it seems beneficial to the health to bully itself, the researchers write.

Endangering mental and physical health
Bullying harms the mental health of children and can lead to inner restlessness, sleep disorders or depression. The physical effects range from headache and abdominal pain to an overall higher susceptibility to disease. As the scientists explain, so far little is known about the way in which the social rejection affects the health. One possibility is a chronic, low-grade inflammation, which can be detected inter alia by the measurement of the C-reactive protein, CRP for short.

Subjects were scientifically monitored for years
The researchers around William Copeland from Duke University in Durham (US state of North Carolina) did just that now in a total of 1,420 people between nine and 21 years, they had accompanied scientifically for many years. During the study period, interviews with the subjects were conducted up to nine times, asking, inter alia, whether they had experienced bullying or had themselves bullied. In addition, blood was taken from them for determination of CRP value. It is already known that the CRP value increases during the transition from youth to adulthood. However, the scientists now found that in caged children, the values ​​in young adulthood (19 to 21 years) increased significantly more than in non-culled children. In addition, the numbers increased with the frequency with which the adolescents had become victims. The study also considered other possible reasons for an increase in CRP levels, such as increased body weight, substance abuse or other childhood psychosocial problems.

Mobben can be a protective factor for the child
It also showed that mobbing children had a significantly lower increase in CRP values. This was even lower than the people who had not come into contact with bullying at all. Those adolescents who were both victims and perpetrators had a similar CRP increase as people without bullying experiences. „Our study shows that the role of a child in bullying can be both a protective and a risk factor for low-grade inflammation“, said William Copeland, first author of the study, according to a news agency dpa. „Increased social status seems to have a biological advantage. But there are other ways than bullying to experience social success“, explained the scientist. (Sb)