The Effects of Bullying on Kids and Adults

Introduction

Bullying remains one of the most pervasive challenges facing children and adolescents today, with far-reaching consequences that extend well into adulthood.

What many healthcare professionals don't realize is that a significant portion of patients presenting with anxiety, depression, or unexplained physical symptoms may be carrying invisible scars from bullying experiences they've never discussed with anyone.

Research consistently shows that victims of bullying face an increased risk of developing mental health issues, including posttraumatic stress disorder, depression, and anxiety disorders that can persist throughout their lives (Committee on the Biological and Psychosocial Effects of Peer Victimization: Lessons for Bullying Prevention et al., 2016).

The scope of this problem also extends beyond individual victims. When children witness bullying, they too can experience mental health difficulties that affect their overall well-being. The ripple effects touch every aspect of a young person's life, from their willingness to engage in school participation to their academic achievement and social relationships. Understanding these complex dynamics helps healthcare professionals provide more comprehensive care and support to those affected by peer victimization.

Examples of bullying

To know more about the impacts of bullying, it is important to know first how it happens. The following are common forms of bullying behavior:

Physical bullying at school

Physical aggression remains the most recognizable form of bullying in educational settings and is a common type of childhood bullying. This includes hitting, pushing, kicking, or damaging personal belongings. Bullied children often report being cornered in hallways, bathrooms, or playgrounds where adult supervision is limited.

In middle school environments, physical bullying can escalate to extremely violent measures, requiring immediate intervention from school authorities and healthcare professionals. Bullying victims are then found to miss school often or skip school to avoid this experience.

Verbal and emotional bullying

Words can inflict lasting damage that extends far beyond physical wounds. Name-calling, threats, and constant criticism create an environment where victims begin to feel ashamed and develop low self-esteem.

This form of bullying behavior often targets personal characteristics, family circumstances, or perceived differences, making children particularly vulnerable during their formative years.

Cyberbullying and digital harassment

Technology has created new avenues for bullying experiences that follow victims home. Social media platforms, text messages, and online gaming environments become spaces where young people face relentless harassment.

Unlike traditional bullying, cyberbullying provides no safe haven, as the torment continues 24/7, significantly impacting mental health and sleep patterns.

Workplace bullying in professional settings

Adults in professional environments face unique challenges when dealing with workplace harassment. This can include public humiliation, excessive criticism, sabotage of work efforts, or deliberate exclusion from important meetings and decisions.

Healthcare professionals may encounter both colleague-to-colleague bullying and patient-to-provider harassment that affects their mental well-being and job performance.

Family and domestic bullying

Bullying within family systems creates particularly complex trauma patterns. Sibling bullying, parental emotional abuse, or domestic violence exposure can establish patterns of victimization that affect how individuals navigate relationships throughout their lives.

These early experiences often contribute to difficulties in forming healthy romantic partner relationships and maintaining appropriate boundaries in social situations.

What are some effects of bullying?

The effects of bullying create profound and lasting impacts that touch every aspect of a victim's life, from their physical health to their mental well-being.

Understanding these consequences helps healthcare practitioners recognize patterns and provide appropriate interventions for individuals affected by peer victimization.

Mental health and psychological trauma

Bullying experiences frequently trigger serious mental health problems, including depression, anxiety, and posttraumatic stress disorder. The case of Amanda Todd exemplifies these devastating psychological impacts. Todd, a 15-year-old Canadian high school student, experienced cyberbullying and sexual extortion that led to her suicide in October 2012.

Before her death, she posted a YouTube video using flashcards to detail her experiences of online exploitation and the emotional distress that followed (Lester et al., 2013). Her story demonstrates how childhood bullying can create traumatic stress responses similar to those seen in victims of other traumatic events.

Academic and educational disruption

The relationship between bullying and academic performance represents a critical area of concern. Repeated acts of peer aggression negatively affect school attendance due to feelings of a lack of safety and school connection, which impacts student academic performance.

Ryan Halligan's case illustrates this academic disruption pattern. Halligan, who died by suicide at age 13 in 2003, experienced bullying that began in fifth grade due to his learning difficulties and friendship with another student. The bullying continued into middle school, where he struggled with both the harassment and its impact on his educational experience (Moreno, 2011).

His story shows how fear of encountering bullies can create educational gaps that compound over time, affecting long-term academic achievement.

Physical health manifestations

While mental health impacts receive significant attention, the physical health consequences of bullying are equally concerning. Chronic stress from ongoing victimization manifests as headaches, gastrointestinal problems, sleep disturbances, and weakened immune function.

Young victims can manifest signs of psychological distress such as being tearful or irritable, losing motivation, and experiencing sleep problems. You may have often encountered bullied children presenting with somatic complaints that initially seem unexplained until the underlying bullying behavior is identified.

Social isolation and interpersonal difficulties

Bullying experiences create profound interpersonal difficulties that affect relationship formation throughout life. The social exclusion that often accompanies peer victimization damages social connections and can lead to social anxiety that persists into adulthood.

Bullying victims frequently become overly sensitive to criticism or perceived rejection, making it challenging to form meaningful connections with peers, colleagues, and romantic partners.

Risky behaviors and substance use

Childhood bullying experiences can lead to increased rates of risky behaviors in adolescence and young adulthood. Kids who are bullied are at risk for various negative outcomes, and although most youth who are bullied do not have thoughts of suicide, bullying can increase risk when combined with other factors like depression and lack of support.

The progression from victim to substance use often begins as self-medication for underlying depression and anxiety, but can escalate to dependence on alcohol and other drug abuse, engagement in early sexual activity, and other risky behaviors.

This pattern reflects attempts to numb emotional pain and escape the persistent negative impact of bullying experiences. You need to screen for substance abuse when treating individuals with histories of peer victimization.

What can you do for victims?

Supporting bullying victims requires a comprehensive, evidence-based approach that addresses both immediate safety concerns and long-term effects.

As professionals, the interventions we provide can significantly impact whether children and adults develop resilience or experience lasting mental health problems.

Trauma-focused cognitive behavioral therapy

Trauma-focused cognitive behavioral therapy (TF-CBT) represents one of the most promising approaches for treating bullying victims who have developed posttraumatic stress disorder or related trauma symptoms.

TF-CBT helps bullying victims identify and challenge distorted thinking patterns that develop after bullying experiences. For instance, a student who begins to believe "everyone hates me" or "I deserve to be treated badly" can learn to examine evidence for and against these thoughts.

The therapy also incorporates behavioral activation techniques and exposure exercises to help victims gradually re-engage with peers and social situations they may have begun to avoid.

Group therapy and support networks

Group therapy offers unique benefits for bullying victims by reducing feelings of isolation and providing opportunities to connect with peers who have shared similar experiences. The group format allows victims to realize they are not alone in their experiences and provides a safe environment to practice social skills.

Support groups specifically designed for bullying victims create opportunities for members to share coping strategies, validate each other's experiences, and build social support networks.

Family systems intervention

Addressing bullying requires working with entire family systems to ensure that home environments provide adequate support and protection. Family therapy can be critical in helping family members understand the impact of bullying experiences and learn how to support the affected individual better. Many families inadvertently contribute to victims' shame by minimizing their experiences or encouraging them to "just ignore it."

Parents and caregivers need education about the psychological effects of bullying and guidance on how to provide appropriate emotional support without increasing victim-blaming.

Family interventions should address communication patterns, establish safety plans, and help families develop strategies for advocating with schools and other institutions.

Comprehensive assessment and treatment planning

Effective intervention for bullying victims begins with a thorough assessment of the full scope of impacts across multiple domains. This includes screening for mental health difficulties such as depression, anxiety, and posttraumatic stress disorder, as well as assessing impacts on academic achievement, social functioning, and physical health.

Many victims present with somatic complaints like headaches or stomach problems that have no apparent medical cause but are related to chronic stress from peer victimization.

The assessment should also evaluate protective factors such as social support, family stability, and individual strengths that can be leveraged in treatment. Understanding the specific types of bullying behavior experienced - whether physical, verbal, relational, or cyber - helps inform treatment planning.

How can you help prevent bullying?

Prevention remains the most effective approach to addressing the effects of bullying before they cause lasting harm to children and young people.

You play a crucial role in bullying prevention by supporting evidence-based interventions, advocating for comprehensive school programs, and helping communities develop proactive strategies.

Implementing evidence-based school programs

The KiVa Antibullying Program, developed at the University of Turku in Finland, exemplifies how comprehensive, evidence-based interventions can transform school environments and reduce bullying experiences.

KiVa combines universal prevention strategies with targeted interventions for specific bullying cases, creating a multi-layered approach that addresses both prevention and response.

Training bystander intervention skills

Bystander intervention represents a powerful prevention strategy that leverages the social dynamics inherent in most bullying situations.

The Stealing the Show, Turning it Over, Accompanying Others, and Coaching Compassion or STAC program provides students with specific strategies for intervening safely in bullying situations. Students learn to recognize bullying behavior, take responsibility for intervention, and implement various response strategies depending on the situation (Moran et al., 2019).

Creating comprehensive environmental changes

Effective prevention requires addressing the broader environmental factors that allow bullying behavior to flourish. This includes establishing clear policies, consistent consequences, and positive reinforcement systems that promote respectful interactions among students or employees.

Schools and workplaces must create cultures where bullying becomes socially unacceptable rather than tolerated or ignored.

Building community-wide prevention networks

Prevention extends beyond individual schools to encompass entire communities working together to address bullying and its effects.

As a healthcare provider, you can facilitate connections between schools, families, and community organizations to create comprehensive support systems. This collaborative approach helps ensure that prevention messages are consistent across settings and that children receive reinforcement for positive social behaviors in multiple contexts.

Main takeaways

Understanding the effects of bullying requires recognizing that peer victimization creates complex, long-lasting impacts that extend far beyond childhood experiences.

Prevention efforts must be multifaceted, involving individuals, families, schools, and communities working together to create environments where bullying behavior cannot flourish.

The lasting damage from childhood bullying makes early intervention crucial, but it's important to remember that healing and recovery remain possible at any stage of life.

When you understand the full scope of bullying impacts on physical health, mental health, and social functioning, you can provide more effective support for victims while contributing to broader prevention efforts.

References

Committee on the Biological and Psychosocial Effects of Peer Victimization: Lessons for Bullying Prevention, Board on Children, Youth, and Families; Committee on Law and Justice, Division of Behavioral and Social Sciences and Education; Health and Medicine Division, & National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. (2016). Preventing bullying through science, policy, and practice (F. P. Rivara & S. Le Menestrel, Eds.). The National Academies Press. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK390414/

KiVa Antibullying Program. (n.d.) What is KiVa?. https://www.kivaprogram.net/what-is-kiva/

Lester, D., McSwain, S., & Gunn, J. F. (2013). Suicide and the Internet: the case of Amanda Todd. International Journal of Emergency Mental Health, 15(3), 179–180.

Moran, M., Midgett, A., & Doumas, D. M. (2019). Evaluation of a brief, bystander bullying intervention (STAC) for ethnically blended middle schools in low-income communities. Professional School Counseling, 23(1), 2156759X2094064. https://doi.org/10.1177/2156759x20940641

Moreno, G. (2011). Cases of victimization: Case 2: Ryan Halligan. Preventing School Failure: Alternative Education for Children and Youth, 55(2), 78–78. https://doi.org/10.1080/1045988x.2011.560495