Weight-based bullying linked to increased adolescent alcohol, marijuana use
Overweight girls most likely to report being bullied, study finds
February 25, 2020
Science Daily/American Psychological Association
Adolescents who are bullied about their weight or body shape may be more likely to use alcohol or marijuana than those who are not bullied, according to new research published by the American Psychological Association.
The link between appearance-related teasing and substance use was strongest among overweight girls, raising special concerns about this group.
"This type of bullying is incredibly common and has many negative effects for adolescents," said lead study author Melanie Klinck, BA, a clinical research assistant at the University of Connecticut. "The combination of appearance-related teasing and the increased sensitivity to body image during adolescence may create a heightened risk for substance use."
"These findings raise larger issues about how society places too much emphasis on beauty and body image for girls and women and the damaging effects that may result," said Christine McCauley Ohannessian, PhD, professor of pediatrics and psychiatry at the University of Connecticut School of Medicine, as well as director of the Center for Behavioral Health at Connecticut Children's Medical Center and a study co-author.
"Schools and communities should specifically address appearance-related teasing in anti-bullying policies and substance-use interventions," she said. "Parents particularly have a role to play in addressing this issue. There is some startling research showing that some of the most hurtful examples of weight-based teasing come from parents or siblings, so families should be kind when they discuss the weight of their children."
The study, which was conducted at Connecticut Children's Medical Center, involved a survey of 1,344 students ages 11 to 14 from five public middle schools near Hartford, Connecticut. The students were asked if siblings, parents or peers had teased them about their weight, body shape or eating during the prior six months. More than half (55%) of the overall participants reported weight-based teasing, including three out of four overweight girls (76%), 71% of overweight boys, 52% of girls who weren't overweight, and 43% of boys who weren't overweight.
The participants also were asked about their alcohol and marijuana use. The results showed that frequent weight-based teasing was associated with higher levels of total alcohol use, binge drinking and marijuana use. In a follow-up survey six months later, weight-based teasing was still linked to total alcohol use and binge drinking. The research was published online in Psychology of Addictive Behaviors.
Previous research has found that boys have greater substance use in their teens and early adulthood, but girls begin using alcohol and drugs at an earlier age compared with boys. Those trends may be related to the societal pressures for girls to adhere to unrealistic body image ideals. This can damage their sense of self-worth and contribute to eating disorders and self-medication through substance use to cope with teasing or fit in with their peers, Klinck said.
"The old saying that 'sticks and stones may break my bones but words will never hurt me' is a fallacy that ignores the serious effects of emotional abuse and verbal bullying," Klinck said. "Weight-based discrimination appears to be one of the most common and seemingly socially sanctioned reasons to bully or discriminate against someone. As a society, we need to address the damage caused by this, especially for girls."
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/02/200225154338.htm
Cyberbullying Linked to Increased Depression and PTSD
January 22, 2020
Science Daily/University of Miami Miller School of Medicine
Cyberbullying had the impact of amplifying symptoms of depression and post-traumatic stress disorder in young people who were inpatients at an adolescent psychiatric hospital, according to a new study published in the Journal of Clinical Psychiatry. The study addressed both the prevalence and factors related to cyberbullying in adolescent inpatients.
"Even against a backdrop of emotional challenges in the kids we studied, we noted cyberbullying had an adverse impact. It's real and should be assessed," said Philip D. Harvey, Ph.D., professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine, who co-authored the paper "Cyberbullying and Its Relationship to Current Symptoms and History of Early Life Trauma."
He says children with a history of being abused were found to be more likely to be cyberbullied, suggesting that assessments for childhood trauma should also include assessments for cyberbullying. Likewise, children who report being cyberbullied should be assessed for a history of childhood trauma.
"Cyberbullying is possibly more pernicious than other forms of bullying because of its reach," Dr. Harvey says. "The bullying can be viral and persistent. To really be bullying, it has to be personal -- a directly negative comment attempting to make the person feel bad."
The study helped to confirm other facts about cyberbullying:
Being online regularly or the amount of time spent on social media weren't determining factors in who was cyberbullied.
Cyberbullying cuts across all economic classes and ethnic backgrounds.
Adolescents who have been bullied in the past had a higher risk of being bullied again.
Studying Cyberbullying's Impact on an Inpatient Psychiatric Population
The study of 50 adolescent psychiatric inpatients ages 13 to 17 examined the prevalence of cyberbullying and related it to social media usage, current levels of symptoms and histories of adverse early life experience.
Conducted from September 2016 to April 2017 at a suburban psychiatric hospital in Westchester County, New York, the study asked participants to complete two childhood trauma questionnaires and a cyberbullying questionnaire.
Twenty percent of participants reported that they had been cyberbullied within the last two months before their admission. Half of the participants were bullied by text messages and half on Facebook. Transmitted pictures or videos, Instagram, instant messages and chat rooms were other cyberbullying vehicles.
Those who had been bullied had significantly higher severity of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), depression, anger, and fantasy dissociation than those who were not bullied.
Links to Childhood Trauma
Participants who reported being cyberbullied also reported significantly higher levels of lifetime emotional abuse on the study's Childhood Trauma Questionnaire than those who were not bullied. These same young people did not report a significantly higher level of other types of trauma (physical abuse, sexual abuse, emotional neglect or physical neglect).
Further studies are needed to establish whether there may be some unique consequence of childhood emotional abuse that makes troubled teens more likely to experience or report cyberbullying.
Conclusions
While all of the participants in this study were psychiatric inpatients, those who had been bullied had significantly higher scores on PTSD, depression, anger, and dissociation scales than those who were not bullied. Dr. Harvey says this finding is consistent with past research.
Dr. Harvey encourages psychologists, psychiatrists and other counselors to routinely ask young people if they were abused or traumatized when they were younger and whether they are being bullied now.
He says adding these questions to the clinical evaluation of adolescents may bring to light symptoms that may have otherwise been ignored. Additionally, factors that may be causing or contributing to those symptoms can be targeted for specific intervention.
Parents and adolescents can take action to discourage bullying, Dr. Harvey says. "It's not hard to block someone on the Internet, whether it's texting, Facebook, Twitter, or sending pictures. Ask why are people choosing you to bully? If it's something you're posting, assess that and make a change."
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/01/200122080526.htm
Parental coaching adolescents through peer stress
December 18, 2019
Science Daily/University of Illinois College of Agricultural, Consumer and Environmental Sciences
During early adolescence, especially the transition to middle school, kids face a number of challenges both socially and academically. Parents can act as social 'coaches,' offering support and advice to youth as they navigate these challenges. Researchers are finding that not all kids benefit from the same types of parental coaching because kids respond to stress differently.
Parents can act as social "coaches," offering support and advice to youth as they navigate these challenges by offering specific suggestions for facing challenges head-on or by encouraging kids' autonomy, to "figure it out" on their own. University of Illinois researchers are finding that not all kids benefit from the same types of parental coaching because kids respond to stress differently.
In a recent study, published in the Journal of Applied Developmental Psychology, researchers report on the connection between how mothers advise their children to respond to specific peer stress scenarios and youth stress responses during conversations about real peer experiences. They also identify what mothers do or say that is particularly helpful in facilitating youth adjustment and well-being in the face of these stressors.
"As we're thinking about the transition to middle school, we're looking at the extent to which mothers are encouraging their child to use active, engaged coping strategies, such as problem solving, help-seeking, or reframing or thinking about the situation in less threatening or negative ways," says Kelly Tu, assistant professor of human development and family studies at U of I.
The study also looks at how mothers may recognize that their children are transitioning into adolescence and looking for more autonomy and independence. "We wanted to examine the extent to which mothers are taking a step back, saying, 'I'm going to let you handle this in your own way -- what you think is best or what works for you,'" Tu says.
Mothers and youth in the study participated during the transition from fifth grade to sixth grade. Mothers were given hypothetical peer stress scenarios such as peer exclusion, peer victimization or bullying, and anxiety about meeting new peers, as well as a variety of coping suggestions. Mothers were asked to report on how they would typically advise their child to respond.
Researchers also observed conversations between youth and their mothers about real peer stress situations. Common topics that were discussed included being around kids who are rude, having problems with a friend, and being bullied, teased, or hassled by other kids.
During the conversations, researchers measured skin conductance level -- the electrical activity happening in the skin as part of the physiological "fight or flight" stress response system -- from youth's hands. "We assessed youths' physiological arousal during these problem-solving discussions to examine how the different levels of reactivity may indicate different needs of the adolescent," Tu explains.
For instance, greater reactivity during the conversations may reflect youths' higher levels of physiological arousal or anxiety in recalling that stressful experience and talking it through with the mother. Whereas less reactivity during the problem-solving conversation might serve as an indicator of youths' insensitivity to the stressful experience. And these different response patterns may require different parenting approaches.
"We found that mothers' active, engaged coping suggestions were more beneficial for low reactive youth. Low reactive youth may not be attending to cues in these conversations about stressful or challenging peer experiences, and so they may behave in ways that are unexpected, non-normative, or inappropriate. But when parents give them specific advice for how to manage challenging peer situations, this appears to be helpful," Tu says.
However, the same active, engaged approached predicted worse adjustment for kids exhibiting higher arousal. "Instead, self-reliant suggestions actually predicted better adjustment for these kids," Tu explains.
"These findings are interesting because this suggests that a multi-step process might work best for kids who are exhibiting high physiological arousal related to peer problems. If you're anxious or stressed, and your parent is telling you to face the problem head on, that might actually create more anxiety.
"But when a parent gives a highly aroused youth more autonomy about how to cope with the peer stressor, this seems to be more beneficial because parents are giving them more space and time to work through the situation in their own way," Tu says. Thus, parents may want to consider the match of their coping suggestions with adolescents' stress reactivity.
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/12/191218153402.htm
Trauma begets trauma: Bullying associated with increased suicide attempts among 12-to-15-year-olds
International study finds bullying victimization is associated with suicide attempts across 48 countries
August 15, 2019
Science Daily/Elsevier
A new study in the Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry (JAACAP), published by Elsevier, reports that bullying victimization may increase the risk of suicide attempts among young adolescents by approximately three-times worldwide.
"Globally, approximately 67,000 adolescents die of suicide each year and identifying modifiable risk factors for adolescent suicide is a public health priority," said lead author Ai Koyanagi, MD, and Research Professor at Parc Sanitari Sant Joan de Deu, Barcelona, Spain.
The findings are based on nationally representative data collected through the World Health Organization's (WHO) Global School-based Student Health Survey, which is a school-based survey conducted in multiple countries across the globe.
The study included 134,229 school-going adolescents aged between 12 and 15 years from 48 countries across five WHO regions, including Africa, the Americas, the Eastern Mediterranean, South-East Asia, and the Western Pacific. The sample was comprised of nine high-income-, 33 middle-income-, and 6 low-income-countries.
The researchers found that more than 30 percent of the adolescents experienced bullying in the past 30 days. Adolescents who were bullied were approximately three-times more likely to report having attempted suicide than those who were not bullied regardless of region.
Dr. Koyanagi and her team also found that the greater number of days adolescents reported being bullied, the more likely they were to report a suicide attempt. When compared to participants who were not bullied, being bullied on more than 20 days in the past 30 was associated with a 5.51 times increased likelihood of reporting suicide attempts.
"The high prevalence of bullying victimization and the substantially heightened dose-dependent risk for suicide attempts among adolescent bullying victims, across multiple continents found in our study, point to the urgent need to implement effective and evidence-based interventions to address bullying for the prevention of adolescent suicides and suicide attempts worldwide," concluded Dr. Koyanagi.
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/08/190815160434.htm
Abusive bosses experience short-lived benefits
September 28, 2017
Science Daily/Michigan State University
Being a jerk to your employees may actually improve your well-being, but only for a short while, suggests new research on abusive bosses.
Bullying and belittling employees starts to take its toll on a supervisor's mental state after about a week, according to the study, which is published in the Academy of Management Journal.
"The moral of the story is that although abuse may be helpful and even mentally restorative for supervisors in the short-term, over the long haul it will come back to haunt them," said Russell Johnson, MSU associate professor of management and an expert on workplace psychology.
While numerous studies have documented the negative effects of abusive supervision, some bosses nevertheless still act like jerks, meaning there must be some sort of benefit or reinforcement for them, Johnson said.
Indeed, the researchers found that supervisors who were abusive felt a sense of recovery because their boorish behavior helped replenish their mental energy and resources. Johnson said it requires mental effort to suppress abusive behavior -- which can lead to mental fatigue -- but supervisors who act on that impulse "save" the mental energy that would otherwise have been depleted by refraining from abuse.
Johnson and colleagues conducted multiple field and experiments on abusive bosses in the United States and China, verifying the results were not culture-specific. They collected daily survey data over a four-week period and studied workers and supervisors in a variety of industries including manufacturing, service and education.
The benefits of abusive supervision appeared to be short-lived, lasting a week or less. After that, abusive supervisors started to experience decreased trust, support and productivity from employees -- and these are critical resources for the bosses' recovery and engagement.
According to the study, although workers may not immediately confront their bosses following abusive behavior, over time they react in negative ways, such as engaging in counterproductive and aggressive behaviors and even quitting.
To prevent abusive behavior, the researchers suggest supervisors take well-timed breaks, reduce their workloads and communicate more with their employees. Communicating with workers may help supervisors by releasing negative emotions through sharing, receiving social support and gaining relational energy from their coworkers.
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/09/170928101243.htm