Persistent bullying could lead to a structural deformation in the brains of teenagers, according to a new study. Bullying is a serious problem for many children and teens that can cause myriad of problems in later life, including long-term impacts on mental health.
Despite the knowledge of its dangers, the biological relationships between bullying and issues in later life such as depression and anxiety are largely unknown.
According to the authors of the new study, their research is the first to suggest that bullying during adolescence can cause social and mental health issues by altering the shape of the brain.
The research involved an analysis of 682 young people from England, France, Ireland and Germany between the ages of 14 – 19. Over the course of the study, participants were given brain scans, and asked to fill out questionnaires detailing the extent of the bullying they received.
Thirty-six of the youngsters reported that they had experienced chronic bullying. The researchers compared the data collected on these extreme cases to that of participants that had endured a less intense level of harassment.
The team discovered that isolated regions in the brains of the severely bullied participants had shrunk significantly. These sections of the brain, known as the putamen and caudate contribute to behavioral processes including reward sensitivity, attention span, and emotional processing.
A degradation to these areas occurring at such a vital formative period in a young person's life, during which their brains physically grow and mature, could explain the heightened levels of anxiety experienced by 19-year-olds who had been heavily bullied.
In light of the findings, the international team of researchers behind the study stresses that every possible step should be taken to stamp out chronic bullying to prevent deviations in brain formation that could lead to mental illness later in life.
The study has been published in the journal Molecular Psychiatry.
Source: King's College London
Bullying creates school shooters.
Student bodies should be very concerned about how they treat the least regarded of their members.
But for decades in the USA, many schools have done the opposite. they allow bullies to have their reign of terror without anything done to stop them, while their victims get punished for fighting back.
I don't care what goes on in the homes of kids doing the bullying, they cannot be allowed to take things out on other kids. If their parents are alcoholics, drug addicts, abuse them, whatever - they need to learn that they can get help for their home problems AND that there's zero tolerance for 'passing on' abuse.
'Course some kids have things great at home and happen to be rotten examples of humanity just because they like being mean.