Introduction
Bullying in schools is a well-known, dangerous, and prevalent problem in the educational collectives internationally. For teachers it is hard to detect in time and deal with effectively since bullying has many forms and is not always evident to even the most qualified outsider. Male and female students alike engage in bullying and become victims of it, sometimes remaining in between and being hurt by the double-edged sword. This study attempts to discuss the main consequences on the mental and physical health of victims, bully-victims, and bullies themselves. It comments on the prevalent patterns and responses that these groups develop both while still in school and later in life.
Victims
Victims of bullying are affected by various consequences beyond embarrassment and social isolation, with the harassment affecting their mental and physical health. Some victims experience serious and permanent distress, preventing them from effectively concentrating on schoolwork. Research generally indicates that the key trait of bullying consequences for the victims is its’ prolonged effect, with bullying altering a victim’s self-esteem in a formative age (Datchev et al., 2019).
It is not uncommon for children to skip school to avoid an encounter with bullies, thus interfering with the natural development. Pupils who have been consistently targeted by have on average more frequently attempted suicide, and suffered from a variety of mental disorders, with most prevalent ones being depression and social anxiety (Tsuang & Tohen, 2011). Furthermore, it was claimed that victimization remains on a multi-generational level, with former victims having children who become victims.
When discussing the proportions and scales of harm, however difficult it may be, it is evident that chronic victims of bullying bare the biggest burden. The term refers to a subset of school bullying victims who remain such even after changing their direct environment (Cicchetti & Cohen, 2016). Such social role is generally allocated to children in primary school, but, if prevalent in secondary school, it alters personal development of a pupil on physical and mental levels alike. Several studies suggest that some chronic victims are “irritating” or “provocative” because they react to the bullying aggressively, which is one of their coping strategies.
These strategies are subconscious, largely irrational and often involve socially unacceptable behaviours, such as lashing out with physical aggression. In these instances in particular, potential for auto aggression or self-harm becomes one of the prevalent health-related consequences for aggressive chronic victims (Smith, 2016). Furthermore, a child might engage in deliberately risky behaviour or seek out damaging restrictive substances, like alcohol or drugs.
Unfortunately, the aforementioned prevalence of anxiety and depression in the victims of bullying often contributes to their perception as easy targets. They are on average significantly more socially withdrawn and have trouble with controlling their emotions (Gillberg, Harrington & Steinhausen, 2009). Furthermore, impact on mental health and self-esteem often traps the victims in a form of abusive social relationships with their bullies, preventing them from changing their situation (Elliott, Fitz-Gibbon & Maher, 2020). Consecutively, large-scale consequences of school bullying can go far beyond the classroom environment and distinct period of time. For example, on a physical level being a victim of bullying can lead to a range of chronic disorders on all levels.
Various health-specific consequences of victimization in school include insomnia, prevalent nightmares, somatic pains, headache & migraines, gastrointestinal symptoms, nausea, and back pain. There is also an established link between being a bullying victim in high school and experiencing abnormal weight gain or loss or developing an eating disorder (Lever at al., 2019). Most of these findings are linked to the voluntary questionnaire responses rather than official medical diagnosis. Some, however, examine the direct and established connections between the aforementioned symptoms and the victimization at school.
It is important to reinforce that although most of the existing research separates physical and mental health consequences of bullying, the most prevalent ones often overlap. In particular, some of the most frequent diagnoses with an established connection to victimization in high school were sleep disruptions and eating disorders. Insomnia and sleep deprivation, although categorized as physical diagnoses, significantly affect a victim’s mental health. Furthermore, eating disorders at the moment are universally considered primarily a mental issue, despite serious consequences for one’s physical well-being and digestive system.
Bully-Victims
Any discussion of the consequences of being a victim of school bullying requires an extra attention to students who are both victims and bullies. These groups were labelled by researchers as provocative victims, aggressive victims, or bully-victims. In some cases, bully-victims might turn inward and engage in self-depreciation and reflection. In other cases, they lash out and act aggressively towards the perpetrators of their bullying and bystanders alike (Runions et al., 2019).
Despite issues with emotional regulation and self-restrain being a common problem for victims, bully-victims and bullies, the group of bully-victims experiences the biggest difficulties in this area (Zych et al., 2017). Being both perpetrators and victims of bullying, they are socially alienated and have additional difficulties with reaching out for help. Importantly, bully-victims show a greater number and variety of problems in relation to further adaption to life and academic success.
Bully-victims, in fact, seem to have the worst of all possible worlds, which is accurately reflected in health consequences they experience. Their volatile position takes even greater tool on their physical and mental health then for most pure victims, as their perception of themselves in acutely irregular and inconsistent (Sung et al., 2018). Social rejection defines their high school experiences, since their in-between position prevents them from enjoying the unfair benefits of popularity that pure bullies occasionally have access to (van Dijk et al., 2017).
In later life they are more likely to develop substance addictions and risk behavior patterns both by themselves and in relationship with their children. Additionally, the experience of bullying and being bullied in high school may result in chronic pains, heath and digestion diseases, sleep disruption and sexual disfunction.
Bullies
Both European and American studies of bullies comment on a psychological portrait of a typical bully, highlighting dominant behaviour, high levels of aggression, average and above popularity and lack of achievement in the academic setting. The prevalent belief of bullies compensating for their personal insecurities has not found sufficient justification, with the research instead revealing their high opinions on themselves (Graham, 2016) to become a danger for themselves, but, primarily, for people around them.
Consecutively it leads to the multigenerational effect, with children of the former bullies not receiving proper care and development at home and engaging in bullying themselves (Iñiguez- Berrozpe et al., 2021). This prevalent family-tied consequence brings the conversation back to the attempts in understanding the nature of bullying.
Bullies tend to be drawn disproportionately from the families of low socio-economic status with instances of casual child abuse and parental lack of emotional resources. Reports predictably reveal that many of these families are dysfunctional and fail to provide appropriate environment for their children on financial, psychological, and sometimes even physical level (Wolke, Tippett & Dantchev, 2015).
By the time school children become bullies, many of them already suffer from undiagnosed psychological or psychic disorders without receiving the necessary treatment. Furthermore, researchers across the world have established the undeniable links between physical punishments in families and bullying behaviour of the children from these families (Miranda et al., 2019). This is particularly true for male bullies, who receive physical punishment more frequently and are quicker to replicate this pattern towards their victims in school.
Despite being socially competent and confident, bullies may experience serious consequences in their relationship patterns. When the link with dysfunctional childhood is upheld, bullies perceive the world around them as an opportunity to strike back and re-establish the sense of control (Pečjak & Pirc, 2017). Consecutively, even relatively tame bullying practices in the supervised school environment may lead to bullies becoming permanently abusive to the people around them, both verbally and physically (Brooks & Cohen, 2020). The consistent link between any part of the bullying cycle and the risk of developing substance addiction also remains.
Conclusion
In conclusion, all three of the outlined groups remain mentally and physically affected by the cycle of bullying later in life. Long-term consequences, depending on the specifics, might result in chronic pains, substance addictions, mental health disorders and patters of abusive behaviour. It is, therefore, crucial that the problem of bullying is addressed not only educationally and socially, but medically. It has been established that the problem is replicated on an intergenerational level, making it particularly difficult to address once and for all.
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