Prenatal and family precursors of bullying involvement in childhood and their consequences into early adulthood

关于欺凌的研究始于1982年，当时挪威有三名小男孩在短时间内相继自杀，他们都留下了被同龄人欺凌的笔记。从那时起，更多的儿童自杀事件被归咎于欺凌。自杀是逃避欺凌的最极端的形式。如果不是自我伤害，成为欺凌的受害者可能会导致儿童时期的一系列心理健康和身体健康问题。越来越多的证据表明欺凌的危害导致奥巴马总统和第一夫人在2011年3月组织了一次关于预防欺凌的会议。用总统的话说，“如果这次会议有一个目标，那就是消除欺凌只是一种无害的成年仪式或成长中不可避免的一部分的神话。不是的“（1）然而，儿童是否能够在毕业后将其经历放在一边，或者参与欺凌是否给受影响儿童的生活投下了长长的阴影，这一点尚不清楚。本研究的第一个目的是了解被欺负对健康，工作生活和成功，犯罪参与和社会适应的长期影响。这将通过研究在两个长期的研究，雅芳纵向研究在英国（ALSPAC）和大烟山研究在美国（GSMS），分别调查儿童长达18和26岁的影响，在童年欺凌对年轻的成年人的结果完成。学校干预措施已被证明对降低欺凌率有一定但有限的影响。为了在学校环境之外制定新的创新预防或干预战略，重要的是要了解是什么使儿童甚至在入学之前就可能成为欺凌者的目标。家庭是孩子学习如何行为的主要场所，与父母和兄弟姐妹谈判，或者他们观察父母和兄弟姐妹如何对待彼此并处理冲突。因此，当父母在养育子女时严厉或充满敌意，或经常互相打架时，是否会影响孩子如何应对同伴欺凌？此外，即使在孩子出生之前，怀孕期间的压力也会影响大脑等器官的发育，以及孩子以后如何应对压力。目前尚不清楚的是，怀孕期间的压力是否会使一些孩子更容易成为欺凌的目标，因为他们很容易表现出不安或开始哭泣等反应。欺负者总是盯着那些表现出强烈情绪反应的孩子。最后，作为少数民族的一员可能会导致更多的欺凌。第二个目标是找出怀孕期间的压力是否（家庭逆境、母亲焦虑和抑郁）、学前家庭关系（即有问题的伴侣关系、养育子女）和个人特征（孩子有多情绪化种族）预测谁在学龄时成为受害者或欺凌者。研究结果将有助于制定新的战略，以加强家庭和儿童，并防止儿童成为欺凌的目标或利用欺凌来折磨其他孩子。资料来源：1 http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2011/03/10/president-obama-first-lady-white-house-conference-bullying-prevention

Research on bullying started in earnest in 1982 when three young boys killed themselves in short succession in Norway, all leaving notes that they had been bullied by their peers. Many more suicides in children attributed to bullying have occurred since then. Killing oneself is the most extreme form of escaping the bullies. If not self-harm, being a victim of bullying can lead to a range of mental health and physical health problems in childhood. The increasing evidence of harm by bullying led to a conference on the prevention of bullying organised by President Obama and the First Lady in March 2011. In the President's words "If there's one goal of this conference, it's to dispel the myth that bullying is just a harmless rite of passage or an inevitable part of growing up. It's not." (1)However, whether children can put their experiences aside once they graduate from school, or whether involvement in bullying throws a long shadow over the lives of affected children is unknown. The first objective of this study is to find out about the long term effects of being bullied on health, work life and success, crime involvement and social adaptation in young adulthood. This will be accomplished by studying the effect of bullying in childhood on young adult outcome in two long term studies, the Avon Longitudinal Study in the UK (ALSPAC) and the Great Smoky Mountain Study in the USA (GSMS) that investigated children up to 18 and 26 years, respectively.Most approaches to beat bullying to date have focussed on schools. School interventions have been shown to have some but limited effects on reducing rates of bullying. To develop new innovative prevention or intervention strategies beyond the school setting, it is important to understand what makes children likely targets of bullies even before they enter school. Families are the primary place where children learn rules of how to behave, negotiate with their parents and siblings, or where they observe how parents and siblings treat each other and deal with conflicts. Thus when parents are harsh or hostile in their parenting or often fight with each other, does it affect how children deal with bullying by peers? Furthermore, even before the child is born, stress in pregnancy can affect the development of organs such as the brain and how children later deal with stress. Unknown is whether stress in pregnancy may make some children more likely to become targets of bullying because they show easily a reaction such as getting upset or start crying. Bullies home in on children who show strong emotional reactions. Finally, being a member of an ethnic minority group may result in more bullying. The second objective is to find out whether stress in pregnancy (family adversity, maternal anxiety and depression), family relations in the preschool years (i.e. problematic partner relationships, parenting) and individual characteristics (how emotional the child is, ethnicity) predicts who becomes a victim or bully at school age.The findings will help to develop new strategies to strengthen families and children and prevent children from becoming the target of bullying or use bullying to torment other children. Sources:1 http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2011/03/10/president-obama-first-lady-white-house-conference-bullying-prevention