The authors from King’s College London carried out a study on just over a 1000 pairs of twins at five, seven, 10 and 12 years of age. All children were born in 1994-1995 in England and Wales. The children were assessed on the risks of self-harming in the six months prior to their 12th birthday. Self-harm data was available for 2141 children.<\/p>\n 237 children were victims of frequent bullying: 18 (8%) of them self harmed. Of the 1904 who had not been bullied, 44 (2 %) had self harmed.<\/p>\n Approximately one quarter of all school-children in the UK are bullied at some point during their school lives. Victimisation is associated with behavioural problems during adolescence<\/strong>, but few studies have tested the assumption that exposure to bullying increases the likelihood that a child will self-harm. The authors hope this study will help to identify those at greatest risk of self-harm.<\/p>\n The authors found that several factors increased the risk of self-harm amongst children who were bullied, including: a family history of self-harming; maltreatment; behavioural and<\/strong> emotional problems. And although the likelihood was slightly higher for girls (1.6%), the association was evident amongst both sexes.<\/p>\n Bullying was defined as when another child: says mean or hurtful things; completely ignores or excludes the victim; hits, kicks or shoves the victim; tells lies or spreads rumours and \/ or does other hurtful things, all on a frequent basis. Examples of self-harm included: cutting and biting arms; pulling out clumps of hair; banging head against walls; attempted suicides by strangulation.<\/p>\n The authors suggest that while “more effective programmes to prevent bullying occurring [\u2026] are required”, there should also be efforts in place to help children cope with emotional distress arising from bullying<\/strong>. And although alternative coping strategies should be provided, the effectiveness of these does need to be investigated.<\/p>\n In conclusion, bullying during early years can have damaging consequences by adolescence, especially if children are also exposed to family adversity or have mental-health difficulties<\/strong>. The authors suggest that schools and healthcare professionals should aim to further “reduce bullying and introduce self-harm risk-reduction programmes” in order to prevent the risk of bullied children hurting themselves in later life.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" From the British Medical Journal press release via MedicalXPress: Children who are bullied in childhood are up to three times more likely to self harm up to the age of… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[9],"tags":[282,12,124],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2660"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2660"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2660\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2661,"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2660\/revisions\/2661"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2660"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2660"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2660"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"http:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/images\/blogpics\/SadChild.jpg\" "\\"sad")
Children who are bullied in childhood are up to three times more likely to self harm up to the age of 12<\/strong>, a study published today on BMJ<\/em> suggests.<\/p>\n