Bullying And Psychopathology

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Pages: 7

Bullying has recently been thrust into the spotlight as a major problem amongst children and young teenagers in schools. With the widespread emergence of technology and the ease at which children can communicate with one another, many feel that bullying has escalated in recent years. Along with bullying, comes a host of other problems, mainly symptoms of psychopathology such as depression and anxiety. John D. Haltigan and Tracy Vaillancourt sought to find the relationship between bullying and these symptoms of psychopathology by analyzing the joint trajectories of four different peer groups: pure bullies, pure victims, bully–victims (i.e., children who bully others but also get bullied) and those with little to no involvement.
In their journal
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The BCFPI is a thirty minute structured phone interview used to screen for emotional and behavioral issues in children ages three to eighteen. Haltigan and Vaillancourt focused on the depression, anxiety and ADHD subscales of the BCFPI. The children also reported symptoms of anxiety, depression and hyperactivity between grades five and nine using the Self-Report of Personality (SRP) form of the Behavior Assessment Scale for Children (BASC-II) (Haltigan, Vaillancourt 2014). These scales utilized a true or false format followed by a frequency …show more content…
One notable exception to this was that the bully group was indistinguishable from the limited involvement group on parent-reported measures of symptoms of anxiety, depression, ADHD and somatization (the process by which psychological distress is expressed as physical symptoms) (Haltigan, Vaillancourt 2014). The victim-to-bully group evidenced higher levels of both parent and child reported depression and ADHD than those in the bully group. These findings are in line with the hypothesis Haltigan and Vaillancourt reported at the beginning of their study. One could assume without any empirical evidence that their hypothesis is true, but Haltigan and Vaillancourt sought to prove their theory with data. The findings and the hypothesis agree in that those who are involved in bullying, either as victim or as bully, have a higher chance of developing mental health problems. Even in the young children tested, there is evidence to support that these children are at a greater risk when compared to those who are not involved in