Bullying can persist into college

Bullying often doesn’t stop in high school, but continues into college - and this applies to the bullies as well as their victims, a new study shows.

“There are some serious, long-term consequences to being bullied for a long time,” Dr. Mark Chapell of Rowan University in Glassboro, New Jersey noted in an interview with Reuters Health, pointing to increased rates of depression and suicidal thoughts as possible results.

Chapell published the first study of bullying in college in 2004. The growing body of research on bullying among adults in the workplace got him interested in looking at the issue in college students, he explained in an interview.

In the current study, to be published in the journal Adolescence, Chapell and his colleagues asked 119 undergrads whether they were currently bullies, victims of bullies, or both, and whether they had experienced or perpetrated bullying in elementary and high school.

Although the rates of reported bullying and victimization fell from elementary to high school to college, both behaviors were still going on among the college students, the researchers found. Most of the bullying was verbal, with physical and social bullying being far less common.

Eighteen of the 25 students who reported being bullied in college said they were also bullied as elementary and high school students, while 14 of the 26 college bullies said they were bullies in elementary and high school as well.

There were 12 students who bullied others and were also victims of bullying, and 5 of these students said they were also bully-victims in elementary and high school.

Given that rates of anxiety, depression and suicidal thoughts are on the rise on college campuses, Chapell and his colleagues note, “it may be time for American colleges and college counseling centers to recognized bullying as a factor in the growing rates of mental disturbances.

The so-called “zero tolerance” anti-bullying programs don’t work, Chapell noted, but bullying prevention programs that involve schools, students, and parents have been shown to be effective. However, “if everybody isn’t involved, it just really doesn’t work,” he said.

SOURCE: Adolescence

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