ArticlePsychological medicine2016
Psychiatric outcomes of bullying victimization: a study of discordant monozygotic twins.
Article in Psychological medicine, 2016. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 31 papers, 4 of them syntheses that pooled it.
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Who cites it
31 citing papers in PubMed, 4 syntheses or guidelines pooled it, 99 citations in OpenAlex.
- The Role of Disability in the Relationship Between Mental Health and Bullying: A Focused, Systematic Review of Longitudinal Studies.Child psychiatry and human development · 2024Pooled it
- The longitudinal course of childhood bullying victimization and associations with self-injurious thoughts and behaviors in children and young people: A systematic review of the literature.Journal of adolescence · 2023Pooled it
- Assessment of School Anti-Bullying Interventions: A Meta-analysis of Randomized Clinical Trials.JAMA pediatrics · 2021Pooled it
- The contribution of bullying victimisation to the burden of anxiety and depressive disorders in Australia.Epidemiology and psychiatric sciences · 2019Pooled it
- Different Tools, Different Results: Comparing Methods for Bullying Assessment in Autistic and ADHD Youth.Journal of autism and developmental disorders · 2025Article
- Association between bullying victimization and obsessive-compulsive disorder: a population-based, genetically informative study.Molecular psychiatry · 2025Article
- Multiple social factors are associated with wellbeing when accounting for shared genetic and environmental confounding.Quality of life research : an international journal of quality of life aspects of treatment, care and rehabilitation · 2025Article
- Peer victimization and social anxiety in adolescence: a comparison between migrant and native students in Italy.Frontiers in psychology · 2024Article
- A cross-lagged twin study of emotional symptoms, social isolation and peer victimisation from early adolescence to emerging adulthood.Journal of child psychology and psychiatry, and allied disciplines · 2023Article
- Stressful life events increase the risk of major depressive episodes: A population-based twin study.Psychological medicine · 2023Article
- Which Children are Frequently Victimized in U.S. Elementary Schools? Population-based Estimates.School mental health · 2022Article
- Development and Validation of the Assessment of Bullying Experiences Questionnaire for Neurodivergent Youth.Journal of autism and developmental disorders · 2022Article
- Integrative Brain Dynamics in Childhood Bullying Victimization: Cognitive and Emotional Convergence Associated With Stress Psychopathology.Frontiers in integrative neuroscience · 2022Review
- Bullying victimization and its associated factors among adolescents in Kozhikode district, Kerala, India: a mixed-methods study [version 1; peer review: 1 approved].Wellcome open research · 2021Article
- A Co-Twin Control Study of the Association Between Bullying Victimization and Self-Harm and Suicide Attempt in Adolescence.The Journal of adolescent health : official publication of the Society for Adolescent Medicine · 2021Article
- Unravelling the contribution of complex trauma to psychopathology and cognitive deficits: a cohort study.The British journal of psychiatry : the journal of mental science · 2021Article
- Twins and Causal Inference: Leveraging Nature's Experiment.Cold Spring Harbor perspectives in medicine · 2021Review
- Genetic and Environmental Influences on Different Forms of Bullying Perpetration, Bullying Victimization, and Their Co-occurrence.Behavior genetics · 2019Article
- Peer Victimization and Selective Attention in Adolescence: Evidence from a Monozygotic Twin Difference Design.Journal of abnormal child psychology · 2019Article
- Peer Victimization and Onset of Social Anxiety Disorder in Children and Adolescents.Brain sciences · 2019Review
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
6 authors at 2 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
Abstract
backgroundBullying victimization in childhood is associated with a broad array of serious mental health disturbances, including anxiety, depression, and suicidal ideation and behavior. The key goal of this study was to evaluate whether bullying victimization is a true environmental risk factor for psychiatric disturbance using data from 145 bully-discordant monozygotic (MZ) juvenile twin pairs from the Virginia Twin Study of Adolescent Behavioral Development (VTSABD) and their follow-up into young adulthood.
methodSince MZ twins share an identical genotype and familial environment, a higher rate of psychiatric disturbance in a bullied MZ twin compared to their non-bullied MZ co-twin would be evidence of an environmental impact of bullying victimization. Environmental correlations between being bullied and the different psychiatric traits were estimated by fitting structural equation models to the full sample of MZ and DZ twins (N = 2824). Environmental associations were further explored using the longitudinal data on the bullying-discordant MZ twins.
resultsBeing bullied was associated with a wide range of psychiatric disorders in both children and young adults. The analysis of data on the MZ-discordant twins supports a genuine environmental impact of bullying victimization on childhood social anxiety [odds ratio (OR) 1.7], separation anxiety (OR 1.9), and young adult suicidal ideation (OR 1.3). There was a shared genetic influence on social anxiety and bullying victimization, consistent with social anxiety being both an antecedent and consequence of being bullied.
conclusionBullying victimization in childhood is a significant environmental trauma and should be included in any mental health assessment of children and young adults.
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