Bullying is a covert trauma. It can affect your physical and mental health, your functioning and your personal and social development.
This article will be updated with further research and sources soon.
Sources
DEVELOPING THE COVERT TRAUMATIC EXPERIENCE SCALE (COTES): A RETROSPECTIVE EARLY PSYCHOSOCIAL TRAUMA ASSESSMENT TOOL
Tiffany E. Vastardis PhD, LMHC, CCTP, CMHIMP
Clinical Education Specialist • Florida Residential Clinical Training Liaison • Mental Health Researcher • Licensed Psychotherapist • Clinical Trauma Specialist • Integrative Medicine Practitioner
Bullying
The past two decades have lent to extensive focus on the effects of bullying on
mental health, physical health, functioning, and psychosocial development. For example,
the experience of being bullied has been associated with externalized symptoms of
psychological distress (King et al., 2018), adulthood obesity (Kerr & Gini, 2017),
adulthood psychological distress (Byjos, Dusing, Zartman, & Cahill, 2016),
unemployment, underemployment, and low wage earning in adulthood (Brimblecombe et
al., 2018), higher societal employment related costs for men and higher health service
costs for women (Brimblecombe et al., 2018), sadness, low self-esteem, embarrassment,
fear, suicidal ideation, anger, psychological pain, loneliness, powerlessness, helplessness,
and confusion (Hutson, 2018), symptoms of psychosis and stress reactivity (CristóbalNarváez et al., 2016), personality dysfunction (Ali, Virani, & Alamans, 2016),
inflammation and metabolic syndrome (Matthews, Jennings, Lee, & Pardini, 2017), and
suicidality amongst U.S. army soldiers (Campbell‐Sills et al., 2017). As a result of
findings from these and other studies, individual states in the US have designated laws
for reporting incidents of bullying within schools and other institutions. Furthermore,
extensive measures have been taken to promote social awareness regarding the negative
impact of bullying.
