TUESDAY, Feb. 20, 2024 (HealthDay News) — Adolescents who are bullied in childhood are more likely to develop internalizing, externalizing, and overall mental health problems in late adolescence, a study found Wednesday. This was revealed in a study published online in . natural mental health.
Dimitris I. Tsomokos, Ph.D., from the University of Glasgow, UK, and George M. Slavic, Ph.D., from the University of California, Los Angeles, investigated how childhood peer bullying affects adolescents’ mental health. The study involved 10,000 young people drawn from the UK Millennium Cohort Study.
Researchers found that youth who were bullied in childhood developed internalizing, externalizing, and overall mental health problems in late adolescence. Interpersonal distrust in mid-adolescence partially mediated this effect. Compared to youth who had less high levels of distrust, youth who had high levels of distrust were approximately 3.5 times more likely to subsequently experience clinically significant mental health problems.
“These data suggest that there is a real need for school-based programs that help foster interpersonal trust at the classroom and school level,” Slavic said in a statement. “One way to do that is to develop evidence-based programs that specifically focus on the transition to high school and college, positioning school as an opportunity to build intimate, long-term relationships.”
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