ArticleNature. Mental health2024
Bullying fosters interpersonal distrust and degrades adolescent mental health as predicted by Social Safety Theory.
Article in Nature. Mental health, 2024. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 13 papers.
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Who cites it
13 citing papers in PubMed.
- Adolescent social media use and psychiatric outcomes: a longitudinal mediation analysis via interpersonal distrust, sleep, and self-image.Social psychiatry and psychiatric epidemiology · 2026Article
- Shattered Safety? Developmental Trajectories for Conspiracy Mentality and Violent Extremist Attitudes.Journal of youth and adolescence · 2026Article
- Family background and peer victimization are associated with generalized trust from adolescence to adulthood.Communications psychology · 2026Article
- Bullying plays a moderated mediation role in the association between emotional intelligence and school engagement through self-esteem.Scientific reports · 2026Article
- Explainable machine learning unveils the key role of cooperation ability in school bullying and its gender-differentiated impact on cooperative atmosphere.Frontiers in psychiatry · 2026Article
- Longitudinal Evidence on Peer Victimisation and Persistent Mental Health Outcomes in Youth: A Systematic Review.Behavioral sciences (Basel, Switzerland) · 2025Review
- Bullying Victimization and Unprotected Sex Among School-Going Adolescents in Argentina: Moderating Role of Parental Emotional Support.Journal of child & adolescent trauma · 2025Article
- The Longitudinal Association between Bullying Victimization and Life Satisfaction among Chinese Adolescents: A Moderated Parallel Mediation Model of Non-Suicidal Self-Injury, Difficulties in Emotional Regulation, and Family Cohesion.Child psychiatry and human development · 2025Article
- Classroom-Level and Individual-Level Prosociality and Help-Seeking Behaviors Among Adolescents.JAMA network open · 2025Article
- Social Safety and Health Outcomes in Emerging Adults: Interactions of Adverse Childhood Experiences and Discrimination.Journal of community psychology · 2025Article
- School bullying and mental health among adolescents: a narrative review.Translational pediatrics · 2025Review
- How community connection, homophobia, and racism shape gene expression in sexual minority men with and without HIV.Health psychology : official journal of the Division of Health Psychology, American Psychological Association · 2025Article
- The chain mediating effect of anxiety and inhibitory control between bullying victimization and internet addiction in adolescents.Scientific reports · 2024Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
2 authors.
Funding
Abstract
Social Safety Theory predicts that socially threatening experiences such as bullying degrade mental health partly by fostering the belief that others cannot be trusted. Here we tested this prediction by examining how peer bullying in childhood impacted adolescent mental health, and whether this effect was mediated by interpersonal distrust and several other commonly studied mediators-namely diet, sleep and physical activity-in 10,000 youth drawn from the UK's Millennium Cohort Study. Youth bullied in childhood developed more internalizing, externalizing and total mental health problems in late adolescence, and this effect was partially mediated by interpersonal distrust during middle adolescence. Indeed, adolescents who developed greater distrust were approximately 3.5 times more likely to subsequently experience clinically significant mental health problems than those who developed less distrust. Individual and school-based interventions aimed at reducing the negative impact of bullying on mental health may thus benefit from bolstering youths' sense of trust in others.
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Registered trials
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