Being bullied doubles chance of link to psychosis..

[Auzgurl]

May 06, 2009 03:09pm

BEING bullied in childhood doubles a young person's likelihood of having psychotic sschizophrenia.
In fact, with longer-lasting and more severe bullying comes greater risk, Dr Andrea Schreier of Warwick Medical School in Coventry, England and her colleagues found.

"Chronic or severe peer victimization has non-trivial, adverse, long-term consequences," they write in the Archives of General Psychiatry.

Both kids and adults "commonly" have psychosis-like symptoms or experiences, without full-blown mental illness, Dr Schreier and her team explain.

Young children who have these symptoms are more likely to develop schizophrenia and similar types of mental illness as young adults, the researchers add, while trauma in childhood also has been tied to adult psychosis risk.

To investigate whether there might be a direct link between trauma from bullying and psychosis symptoms, the researchers looked at 6437 12-year-olds participating in a long-term study of children and their parents.


Courier Mail, 11 Feb 2009 All of the children had been completing annual psychological and physical health assessments since they were seven years old.

In the current report, the researchers determined whether the 12-year-olds had any of 12 different psychotic symptoms, such as visual or auditory hallucinations, delusions of being spied on, or beliefs that they could broadcast their thoughts to others.

Children had also been surveyed about peer victimisation at 8 and 10 years of age.

Overall, 46 percent of the children reported having experienced victimisation - including either direct bullying or "relational" victimisation such as being excluded - at age 8 or 10, while 54 percent weren't victimised at either age.

Kids who reported being bullied at either age were roughly twice as likely as the other children to have psychotic symptoms, regardless of any other mental health problems, family situation, or IQ. "

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I read about a week ago that Martin Bryants shooting spree may have been linked the fact he was bullied at school..It seems that most school massacres these days are linked to angry psychotic victims of bullying..schools seriously dont address this problem as the serious issue that it is..



http://www.babble.com.au/2009/04/27/wha ... s-a-child/

[Hebe]

Martin Bryant was bullied at school because he was anti-social, frightening and threatening.

[Auzgurl]

Martin Bryant was bullied at school because he was anti-social, frightening and threatening.

yes the article gives that impression, but he was a child and if given timley intervention , could have been a different adult most likely. Kids are products of their environment .

What I find saddest about the whole story is that Bryant was not born ‘bad’, just different. Psychologists knew the warning signs were there. His parents tried to shield him from society as much as possible. Yet it seems there were no support networks in place to stop his slipping through the cracks and becoming more violent, a path that eventually led to the massacre of 35 people at the Port Arthur site in Tasmania on 28 April 1996.

[Hebe]

His schoolmates give that impression too I'm afraid. I'm not sure what could have been done.