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Bullying's Hidden Danger
The latest research shows bullying can have far more damaging effects than parents realize, including the emergence of psychotic tendencies in some victims as they enter adolescence.
If you hear Jodee Blanco's painful coming-of-age story and it reminds you of the Stephen King classic in which a teenage girl tortured by her peers finally wreaks revenge upon them, Blanco will beat you to the punch. “If you saw Carrie, then you’ll know what I went through,” she says.
"I was singled out from fifth-grade through the end of high school," says the husky-voiced Blanco, 45, who grew up outside of Chicago, and is the author of Please Stop Laughing at Me, a memoir of being bullied. "I was very vocal, very verbal, and very artsy."
She pulled a butcher knife, threatened to kill everyone in her school, then cut her own face before her family wrested the knife away from her.
For that, she says, she suffered a litany of miseries: Some popular girls invited themselves over to her place for a sleepover, and when she finally fell asleep, doused her with ketchup, mustard, and makeup. Because she volunteered with kids with Down Syndrome and defended them against other kids' taunts, her shoes were thrown in the toilet with a note that said, "Everyone hates you, retard lover—go to another school." The abuse continued right through senior year in high school, she says, when a guy whom she thought was a friend (when they were alone, at any rate) wrote in her yearbook: "Fuck you, bitch, everybody hates you and always will."
By her junior year in high school, she couldn't take it anymore. In front of her mother and grandfather in the kitchen, she says, she pulled a butcher knife, threatened to kill everyone in her school, then cut her own face before her family wrested the knife away from her and took her to the emergency room. A barrage of psychiatric evaluations and medications followed. "Everybody had an answer," she says, "but back then, nobody understood bullying. They just didn't get it."
Since then, a growing body of research has linked being bullied to such later disorders as emotional trouble, depression, and post-traumatic stress disorder, which Blanco says she currently experiences due to being bullied. But now, a new study from Britain suggests that bullying may have even more dire psychiatric effects. Researchers from the University of Warwick in Coventry, England, followed nearly 6,500 children from before birth until age 13. They found that those who were bullied by peers between the ages of 8 and 10 were twice as likely to show signs of psychosis—such as visual and auditory hallucinations, delusions, and disordered thinking—by adolescence. Those who'd been severely or chronically bullied were more than four times as likely.
Dieter Wolke, one of the researchers, says the study is the first to follow the effects of bullying going forward in real-time, rather than relying on the childhood memories of mentally ill adults. The study is also remarkable, he says, because it found a strong correlation between bullying and psychotic symptoms, even when it took into account a family predisposition toward schizophrenia or bipolar disorder, in which such symptoms often emerge. "All current theories focus very much on predicting neurological or genetic factors in predicting psychosis," he says, "but this may actually show how potent social factors can be."
The findings come as no surprise to Blanco, who now tours schools nationwide to present her seminar, It's Not Just Joking Around, an autobiographical reenactment of her years being bullied. "My message to kids is just that," she says. "That it's not just joking around. You damage each other for life."
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Lloyd Grove is editor at large for The Daily Beast. He is also a frequent contributor to New York magazine and was a contributing editor for Condé Nast Portfolio. He wrote a gossip column for the New York Daily News from 2003 to 2006. Prior to that, he wrote the Reliable Source column for the Washington Post, where he spent 23 years covering politics, the media, and other subjects.
What's Next? Gay Divorce
Tim Murphy has contributed to the New York Times, New York, Out, The Advocate and Poz. He lives in New York City.
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Tim Murphy has contributed to the New York Times, New York, Out, The Advocate and Poz. He lives in New York City.
I think of this psycho babble plays into the bullying too.
For example, a person who feels they have been wronged once, has a right to feel they could be wronged again. To assume they are making it up, is giving preference to the bully, the offender not the defender, and the offenders could be a vocal group.
The bullies know that calling someone paranoid will frivolous the victim's concerns.
I would suspect most abuse victims have adjustment problems, which may be a good thing, who wants to be adjusted to being abused, I guess if the price was right, you could make the adjustment, but it should be a choice.
And making choice implies having a bit of social power.
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The bad side is part of the risk, people who are broken are not necessarily ill. Possibly dysfunctional, Maybe that is not pretty, to point that out, but it is true. How many people have you walked by today, who look broken. I hvave walked by ten. The article is fine, but it is only part of the analysis. If social workers were paid as much as shrinks to fix things, maybe bullying could be taught out of people, instead of trying to fix the bullied after they can't trust, love or function any more. People join gangs often for protection. I prefer a personal alarm. I pushed mine once, when I was swarmed, three cops cars came with their lights on, luckily I was by my signal, two got arrested, the others got lecutred to. It happened so fast, they had no idea what happened. The power of technology will set us free. Words just get lost, if they survive misspellings of course.
I think though it is a lot worse to have a sister or brother at home who is a bully cause there is no escape.
you mean unlike school where you can escape?
Sadly, we have seen many instances like that of Ms. Blanco's. In response, my organization released a guide for parents called Taming the Bullying Monster: A Guide to Help Your Child Cope with Bullying which offers tips on how to help children stand up against and overcome bullying. The guide offers a 'Triple A Response: Ally, Advocate, Action,' which teaches parents how to strengthen communication with their children, serve as their advocates, and develop strategies for taking action against bullying.
Amy
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I'd be interested in seeing the parents of kids who get bullied studied. It seems to me that the kids who are succeptible to bullying lack proficiency in social interaction and I would not be surprised if that deficit begins at home. I'm not sure what the proposed study would find: socially impaired adults? adults to busy to notice? genetic component? adults who spend less time with their kids? I just don't know, but it would be interesting.
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Agreed.
It should not have to take a pivotal Clint Eastwood 'make my day moment' to finally make the victim feel like he / she has power over the situation.
Speaking as the parent of a child who suffered terribly from bullying in middle school, I can tell you that yes, my child has Aspergers Syndrome, so he has lacks some proficiency in social interaction, but if anything I probably spent MORE time with my child trying to help him negotiate the social maze than parents of "neuro-typical" children. It got to the point where a month before the end of eight grade I pulled him out of school completely and refused to send him back until they could provide him with a safe environment. He ended up finishing the year doing independent study in the guidance office.
Why are you so quick to blame the victims and their parents? I watched my son suffer every day and hated the moment I dropped him off at the school door. Fortunately, he is now in a private school and he has blossomed - it is not an exaggeration to say that it has changed his life. I'm just thankful that I have the resources to send him there. Others aren't so fortunate.
"...the kids who are succeptible to bullying..."
stop. just stop right there. please move away from the keyboard.
Speaking anecdotally, you are probably on to something. Not much, but something. In my case, it was certainly a social isolation borne of overprotective parents.
So it's the victim's fault.
Were you a bully? It would be interesting to explore that too.
Which came first, the poor social skills or the bullying? Bullies seek weak targets, then pick on them. The worst case I ever heard of someone being bullied was a man with very low emotional intelligence, and he was born that way. Oftentimes, victimization starts at home and the victim brings those behavior patterns to school where it starts all over again. Interesting article.
I think your hypothesis is wrong. Bullies generally pick on kids that act mature than they are. Bullies are actually insecure kids who feel threatened by kids that act more adult like. They act out to put someone down to make themselves feel better. If you don't go along with their immature activities or agree to bully other kids you yourself will be a victim. The constant bullying is what leads to a self fulfilling prophecy that makes kids insecure and social outcasts.
I'm glad this is being studied, quantified and as a society we'll stop accepting bullying as a necessary social tool.
What amazed me about Columbine wasn't that it happened but that it doesn't happen more often. It's astounding what parents, teachers and peers will allow, as if bullying was some social Darwinian necessity.
I remember two kinds of bullies at school: the popular kid who lead through a combination of confidence, charm, and intimidation, and the misfit whose rage isolated them from most people and they picked on a few targets with their lackeys. The only real difference I suspect is the former learned a highly useful social veneer.
I grew up the youngest in a large family with socially prominent, gorgeous parents that were used to getting their way. Verbal and physical bullying were the norm and as the youngest I was the easiest target -- I got no help or sympathy because part of growing up was learning how to be strong and obviously you had to learn to fight back.
No surprise, I don't even talk to most of my siblings now. Our parents didn't teach us to treat ourselves, each other or anyone with real respect. Manners, charm and politeness, well those were essential. As many a well written novel illustrates, these are not mutually exclusive qualities.
And of course I went to school and in that arena where physical size wasn't at play I dominated the pack with all the lessons learned at home.
I look back and I think both Agatha and mblips are *both* right on: the parents of the victimizers and the victims need help. I think there is a very thin line between them, with more in common than not.
In middle school we moved from a tony suburb where executives lived and the kids were focused on sex, drugs, status and social domination, to a school in the high tech corridor where the kids were engaged in a multitude of activities, where academics were important and the kids were involved and interested in the bigger world. Bullying was non-existent in comparison.
Parents set the tone.
I love it! Researchers are now discovering their are "hidden dangers" in being bullied. Any victim of bullying could have told you that without all that fancy research.
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correlation doesn't necessarily mean causation
Child bullies grow up to be workplace bullies. This has been know for over twenty years to cause PTSD, yet mental health professionals in our country know little about it. It has been made illegal in several countries as people end up on disability and are taken out of the workplace. Workplace bullies always target the same kind of people those who go to work to do the work, are knowledgable, intelligent, have a sense of humor, are talented, other people like them, and more. Ino other words they go after the people who are the best employees because of their own psychological problems. They also waste the money of the companies they work for.
I was a bully, I got bullied, that's what happens in school. We are become a nation of punks, nobody is supposed to ever have their feelings hurt. This is why we have so many spoiled, whining, brats who expect everything to go their way.
I was thinking the same thing...
Bully=punk.
Anthropologically, bullying is a way of driving the weak from the pack. Even children can identify the socially weak by the age of 5 or 6, or even younger. In a smaller, closed community, these people would be less likely to reproduce, which is the evolutionary object. It's a sad business for the victims, but underneath is a strong instinctive drive among the bulliers that will probably never be eradicated. They are preserving the future of the group. Hopefully, there will be easier, standardized ways to identify the worst of the bulliers, who are themselves socially warped, at the other end of the aggression spectrum. Or just ask the other kids who the worst offenders are.
I guess that explains why all those stupid rednecks bullied all the really smart kids in school. The species is clearly trying to cull out the ability to read. Good point.
"They are preserving the future of the group."Jeez, what pseudo Darwinian crap.
You do realize that most artists (a very important component of any flourishing culture) have experienced bullying in school. Just read any random selection of interviews with current writers, actors, singers, musicians, geeks etc...you'll stumble across their experience of bullying in their youth.
So are they suppose curl up and die?
Very good points...I was extremely shy/bookish in school - as a result was bullied from about the age of 7-15 (when I went to an alternative/arts highschool) for being smart. I would come home with a black eye, scratched face, torn clothes, or other tale of woe. My parents told me to "deal with it" and that the worst thing I could ever do would be to strike another human being in anger, that I should always act lady-like (waaay to much Catholic school on mom's part growing up I think...)
All of my highly-successful adult friends were mercilessly bullied as children/teens - some are still rather scarred by the experience, even though they are MDs, programmers, designers, professors, and engineers in their mid-30s-40s.
The fine line between adversarial and competitive, getting even and being dangerous, is getting blurred again. All we need is love.
When ever I burst into song, the meanies go away. :).
All we need is love, la la la All we need is love la la la.
Excellent article.
There are different levels of this. Everyone is bullied at one point or another. But what can happen is nothing short of torture. I've seen it happen.
Why don't we do a better job of dealing with this?
vboone, that is not what should happen in a school. Learning should happen in a school. Schools can foster cooperation, taking turns and respect for differences which has it's own way of reducing whining and brattiness.
Of course, children are children and we will always have bullies and victims. There are plenty of opportunities to be exposed to bullying after school, weekends and summer vacations.
But in this day and age don't have the luxury of letting our kids learn how to bully and be bullied in school.
Some of the first few responses to this article sounded really stupid (as opposed to ignorant.) Maybe I am naive, but they really surprised me. I think of TDB's readership to be like that of The New Yorker, but maybe because it is online it can be targeted by the same hecklers as any other website...
Anyway, the article itself is superb, and quite enlightening. I, and many of my brainier friends, formed kind of a pack back then, and sheltered each other from the negative effects, or frequency, of bullying. But I know that I saw other people who weren't so lucky, and have always thought bullying was a real scourge with serious consequences. With new research like this coming to light, it is good we can now all realize just how much damage is done and are more equipped with the language and tools necessary to deal with it.
There's a staged reality show called "Bully Beat Down" on MTV where victims convince their bully to battle a mixed marshall arts fighter in a cage for money via the host/promoter called Mayhem who's also MMA fighter...The bullies get some street/cage justice and the victims get the satisfaction of their bully's beat down plus some cash...Great idea...To bad it's all scripted.
Have you ever seen the film "Welcome to the Doll House"? It shows (among other things) how geeky guys form geek-groups/support eachother, but geeky girls are SOL most of the time. It was OK in the 70s-80s for males to be smart, but heaven-help-you if you were a brainy female who was non-blonde/didn't have the right clothes (or whatever the hell it was). It's a good film, if a bit painful to watch in parts (also quite funny too.)
I love that movie. It is hilarious and yes, extremely painful to watch at times. The ending just kills me where Dawn sits on the bus singing along with the rest of the kids but clearly by herself, ostracized and alone.
Sniff, I need some tissue...
~
Have been looking at this site for a long time now but just registered so I could comment on this piece.
It is absolutely true that bullying can lead to psychosis as well as depression. And/or greatly aggravate an existing condition.
It's ridiculous what we expect a child or teen to endure. If it happened to you at the office there would be major lawsuits.
I cannot tell you how lasting the pain is, how difficult it can make the rest of a person's life.
Excellent article - I would argue that those people who exhibit early manifestations of psychosis tend to be those who are bullied, not that this excuses bullying or peer abuse of any kind. economic and racial factors influence bullying as well. Of course, the problem begins at home on both ends. Physical and mental abuse teaches a child to react in the same way when they feel cornered, leading to a vicious cycle. I speak from experience here, and I spend a lot of time each day (I teach college) trying to create a calm community in my classrooms, despite my natural instincts. Fortunately for me, I keep thinking its 1986, which was a good year for me, but I feel Ms. Blanco's pain and hope the best for her.
I have always found it puzzling why there is this particular spotlight on the bullied and how to help them, as though there is something about them that needs to be fixed.
The ones who need to be fixed, who are really sick, are the bullies. They are the ones who need treatment, who should be shunned at school (not collect followers who look up to them). In a healthy society, they would be shown, in no uncertain terms, that their anti-social behaviour does not get rewarded, it gets you marginalized by your peers. But that's not what happens in the modern world.
For all our protestations about bullying, the reason why we just pay lip service to its horrors is because - in the big picture - in this modern western capitalist world, bullies run the show. They succeed. So until that painful fact is acknowledged, bullying and all its repercussions will continue to be endemic in schools.
Exactly. A lot of the attention is on the victim, rightly so, but teachers and administration often excuse or ignore the bullying behavior. "Just kids being kids." The kids know it is wrong. That is why they do it behind the adults' backs. It is up to the adults in schools and at home to teach children that bullying is wrong and to enforce proper behavior. Anthropologically, yes, we USED to be cavemen and drive away the weak. Come to think of it, I have met a few modern day cavemen.
I think the bullied are focused on because it's easier for the authorities in place to handle the problem that way, rather than deal with the source of the problem - meaning the bullies.
Tackling an interpersonal problem like this head on - or any sort of interpersonal problem - involves a great of personal courage, patience, wisdom, will, caring and candor. And just isn't done by anyone placed in authority. It requires a hero who will step up and tackle the issue, the type of hero of which we are always in short supply.
I've seen this in school, I've seen this in the workplace, and I imagine it exists everywhere. Even here.
When one of my employees, meaning someone who reports to me, asks me why so-and-so in some other department or part of the company is allowed to get away with bad behavior, my answer if I trust the person is 'managerial cowardice'. If I don't trust them, then I tell them I don't know.
I think this cowardice is pandemic. Perhaps it's even self-protective. I don't know. I think it suggests an absence of leaders. Not just among the school administration and faculty, but among the children involved, and their counterparts in the corporate world and in the public square.
I am not sure where heroism comes from, but I know it exists. In real life. I think we should figure out how to create more of them, and put them in leadership positions. I think the absence of heroism comes from fear. I don't think many of us are taught how to put our fear aside.
Lastly, my use of the word hero might confuse some readers. It is not gender specific nor does it imply the need for a Rambo or Jesus or Martin Luther King or John Brown or Maximus Decimus Meridius or William Thompson or Audie Murphy or Arland Williams or Pat Tillman or Rosa Parks or Billy Forrester. All heroes. Real or wished for. Anyone who knows what needs to be done and has the will to do it qualifies.
This article is anything but psychobabble. Anyone who would call it that has never been the victim of bullying.
Where would you like to start....the absolute fear of going to school everyday during junior high? How about the panic attacks in later life that were caused by bullying, or the years and the dollars spent with psychiatrists and counselors to figure out how to get past the terror?
If that isn't enough, how about a nice round with co-workers who treat you like dirt? No more threats with fists or violence. Just cruel words and mean-spirited criticism. How about going to work with a knot in your stomach everyday?
Sounds like fun, doesn't it. Take part or all of the above, and you will feel the agony felt by those of us who tried but could not escape those old feelings of worthlessness.
I am 54, and I am better now. But that pain will always be deep inside of me.
I think Hitler was a bully/bullied. All kinds of psychobabble could describe him. But the reality, I think is, sado/masochistic relationships, are as psychobabble says, about co-dependency, but it is not clear how much it is about choice.
Once the patterns are set, and shapes a person, it is not clear how much is nature, and how much is nurture.
That is what I meant.
I didn't mean to dismiss your pain as pychobabble. I am sorry if I sounded like I was doing that.
Oops: Beat me :(.
I meant: I didn't mean to dismiss your pain as pSychobabble. I am sorry if I sounded like I was doing that.
I think though, from cartoons on, we are being shown how much more fun it is to see people fighting than getting along. And all the dramas on tv etc.
Being competitive is not exactly the same as being adversarial. Maybe people need to be taught how to play fair.
I mean psychobabble seems to imply it is about the person instead of the situation.
In many situations, you are either a winner, or a loser, or two people that are willing to compromise, and they don't win or lose as much. Game theory is all about that. The alternative to sum zero games.
Damaged people are probably more psychologically injured than mentally ill.
If a person had a broke leg, the cause of the injury would be avoided, it would not be called an illness, it would be called an injury.
Why do people who get broken psychologically from being abused, get called mental, instead of hurt?
Thus psychobabble, and the need for malpractice insurance.
David Letterman should be reading this article. Letterman is guy with a fancy tv show, mocking a girl/woman, who is a single mum, and millions of kids who watch that show, could think it is normal to show disrespect and hurt others, as if it didn't matter, as if it is funny.
If Bristol was depressed over it, which I wouldn't blame her at all, it was an avoidable situation, like most things that cause injury are.
Illness on the other hand often happens because a person gets a bug or something. The cause of the "mental illness" seems to always be so mysterious, even though often these people have been very hurt/ broken, thus in my opinion, being sick and broken need to be differentiated, but where is the big bucks for that?
The big bucks are in advertisements for Letterman type shows that encourage crude jokes towards vulnerable people, which Bristol really is right now.
I like the article too. Hooray for a sensitive man.
In my mind, diagnosing someone for a medical problem, when it is a social problem, beyond their control obviously, leading to the person losing trust in people, is another form of bullying, and would only happen if people were getting paid doing it. In worse cases you could land with someone like octomom as one of the staff in your "care" home, fighting with you, with no chance of a batter life. I think anything is babble if it is not true. I would think these rare mental conditions are way over diagnosed, and many of those people are seeing the so called system, failing them one more time. Now that jobs scarce, these mental health jobs, would be tempting to create.
I would think dismissing someone as paranoid, when a person experiences alot of negativity and feels threatened by it might not be unusual. There is big money in this psycho babble.
More people prefer using machines. They trust electronical bank and stuff a lot more than the mail.
Home schooling, and online higher learning can offer opportunities that brick and mortar buildings don't offer, including security.
That could be part of the problem in the economy. More people who could be offering jobs to humans are hiring machines to do them, cause the cost can be more predictable.
Take the mail for instance, it can take anywhere from 4 days to ten days to get a letter, so it is hard to trust the mail. And the mailman can get the mail mixed up, what protects you from an abusive mailman even.
It is hard to know, especially if you are brought up, where nothing ever protects a person, if people don't like you, accept your ability to get even. You have to weigh probabilites to stay sane, not get dxed by people who may be able to bill medical $185 an hour for labelling you a rare disorder, that is becoming more frequently dxed, {I wonder why?}
I think the third world countries must feel bullied all the time by our wealth, power, and our ability to intrude into their lives.
And even if we don't intrude, they are probably scared we will, and visa versa,
We are terrified of terrorism. Partly because we have the technology to do more damage to each other.
So why wouldn't kids reflect this charecteristic in our culture and civic climate.
We also have the technology to communicate, and then we could appear to be less physically threatening if we wanted to be.
Of course I meant better not batter, but batter fits too I guess.
I mean a country where possibly over 50 women were dispossed of in a wood chipper. And no one helped them.
I live in a country, where a man died outside shoppers drug mart, when there was an empty hotel across the street.
Our social system, that has such a fine line between competitive and adversarial, probably creates hundreds thousands of victims every day of the week. That is not news, It is a massive tragedy that we walk by every day of our lives, hoping an expert will fix it, so we don't have to look at these people.
I am snarky. ha ha.
I think you've highlighted the essential problem here: one of the most important lessions kids are learning in high school is how to deal with social competition. This is a vital skill, and probably as important as anything else they learn.
When does it stop being competition and start being bullying? Apparently this is in the eye of the beholder; according to the article, Blanco's tormenters weren't aware that they were bullying her.
I told my wife a few weeks ago that I didn't recall any bullying going on when I was in high school; she said that that was because I was the bully (she meant it in the nicest way ...).
Thank you.
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