In their study of 2,232 twins reared together and separately as a part of the Environmental Risk (E-Risk) Longitudinal Twin Study, Baldwin and colleagues (2015) found that children who had experienced chronic bullying showed greater adiposity subsequently, but not at the time of victimization. Future research might build on this large multisite longitudinal study and obtain more in-depth evidence on individuals' physical health as a consequence of bullying. It is critical to understand that this study, or other studies assessing correlations between behavior and events, cannot state that the events caused the behavior. Limitations to this study were that physical health was measured by participants' perceptions of their health-related quality of life, rather than by objectively defined physical symptoms.

These effects were not as strong when students were in tenth grade. Among seventh grade students with the worst-decile physical health, 6.4 percent were not bullied, 14.8 percent had been bullied in the past only, 23.9 percent had been bullied in the present only, and nearly a third (30.2%) had been bullied in both the past and present. The Physical Health Subscale measured perceptions of physical quality of life.īogart and colleagues (2014) found that children who were bullied experienced negative physical health compared to non-involved peers. Data consisted of responses to the Peer Experience Questionnaire, the Pediatric Quality of Life Inventory with its Psychosocial Subscale and Physical Health Subscale, and a Self-Perception Profile. They collected data when the cohort was in fifth grade (2004 to 2006), seventh grade (2006 to 2008), and tenth grade (2008 to 2010).

Bogart and her team were interested in the cumulative effects of bullying on an individual. In one of the few longitudinal studies on the physical and mental effects of bullying, Bogart and colleagues (2014) studied 4,297 children and their parents from three urban locales: Birmingham, Alabama 25 contiguous school districts in Los Angeles County, California and one of the largest school districts in Houston, Texas. 1 However, the long-term physical consequences of bullying can be difficult to identify and link with past bullying behavior versus being the result of other causes such as anxiety or other adverse childhood events that can also have physical effects into adulthood ( Hager and Leadbeater, 2016). The physical health consequences of bullying can be immediate, such as physical injury, or they can involve long-term effects, such as headaches, sleep disturbances, or somatization.

Bullying bill of particular