School bullying as a predictor of violence later in life: A systematic review and meta-analysis of prospective longitudinal studies

This podcast discusses the findings in the journal article School Bullying as a Predictor of Violence Later in Life

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:09):
Hey, composition of a Killer Fans. Doctor Cassidy here, thanks
for joining me today. I'm excited to be talking about
school bullying. Before we begin, as always, we always want
to say that what we talk about here in this
podcast is not meant to be a clinical diagnosis. So
I find it interesting talking about school bullying that we

(00:33):
often think about the victim of the school bully, but
we really need to take time to look at the
bully himself or herself. Tophie Farrington and Lucelle did a
really nice longitudinal study on in the Aggression and Violent

(00:56):
Behavior Journal, and it's called school Bullying as a Dictor
of Violence Later in Life. A systematic review and meta
analysis of perspective longitudinal studies, which means they simply took
all of the relevant studies that they could find in
their research and then they collected all the data from
those and they analyzed it to see what exactly happens

(01:22):
to a bully, what exactly is that trajectory for them
once they are established as a bully, and how that
affects us as a society. A brief overview, it tells
us that this is the result of a thorough systematic

(01:44):
review on the efficacy of school bullying, which is the
perpetration and victimization in predicting aggression and violence later in life.
Results are based on prospective longitudinal studies. Two meta analysis
are presented, examining whether a school bullying, which is the
perpetration and victimization, is a significant predictor of later aggression

(02:06):
and violence, and b whether each effect remains significant after
controlling for other major childhood risk factors which were significantly
related to both the predictors and the outcomes. Results are
based on extensive searches of the literature. Nineteen Electric Electric
Electronic databases and sixty three journals were searched from the

(02:28):
inception of each database or journal through the end of
March twenty twelve. This is a fairly dated journal article,
and I typically won't go past seven years, that's the
industry standard. But we find if you find a journal
article like this that is a review of other journal articles,

(02:52):
the facts remain the same because it is reviewing other
research articles. But I chose to actually use this one
because the information in it is really just striking, so
and the numbers may change just a little bit, but
they're not going to change too much. This is pretty

(03:15):
well established within the industry. Bullying perpetration at school was
a significant predictor of violence an average of six years
later in life, So that means that if someone were
established as a bully a bully in school up to

(03:37):
six years later, you could say they were going to
become a violent offender. It also means that bullying perpetration
increased the risk of later violence by about two thirds.
The summary effect size for bullying victimization versus violence was
markedly smaller, but still highly significant. This value means that

(03:59):
victimization increase the risk of later violence by about one third.
Analysis are presented of various potential moderators, such as the
number of risk factors controlled for and the length of
the follow up period. In an attempt to explain the
significant heterogeneity in effect sizes. Sensitivity analysis are performed on

(04:20):
both meta analysis and they indicate that overall there is
no evidence of publication bias. The overall findings favor the
existence of the existence of a more general, long term
underlying antisocial tendency rather than a more specific underlying violent tendency.
Implications of our research for policy and practice are highlighted
and the future needs in this area of research are indicated,

(04:43):
which is pretty typical in any journal article the whole purpose.
You need to have implications and you need to have
recommendations for future studies. Basically, what they're saying in this
abstract is that all findings of this review of research

(05:04):
states that there's more of a long term underlying antisocial
tendency rather than a more specific underlying violent tendency, so
that anti social tendency tends to be the motivator for bullies,
which sounds really weird, But when we look at violent offenders,

(05:26):
only look at serial killers, most of them are antisocial.
They have an antisocial disorder, and we see that almost
across the board. You can probably think of some exemptions
to that. I would certainly say Ted Bundy was an
exemption to that because he was charming, and he had
a social life, and he had, you know, a family,

(05:49):
and it never was stated that he was a bully,
but you can see later in life that he was.
He could He was a great manipulator. And while that's
not technically bullying, manipulation can cause the same type of
the same type of scars, if you will. So let's

(06:13):
read the introduction here just to get an idea of
why they chose to do this. Bullying continues to be
a serious problem playing school youth in both developed and
developing countries. Early longitudinal research highlighted the negative impact of
school bullying on children's internalization such as depression and externalizing
such as offending behavior, and various reviews of synthesized research

(06:35):
on the topic. Following a strong scientific interest in school
bullying research in Scandinavian and subsequently other European countries, bullying
has gradually become a topic of general public concern and
has drawn a lot of media attention, with articles in
major newspapers and magazines reporting cases of children who committed
or attempted suicide because of severe bullying victimization at school,

(07:00):
and parents suing school authorities for their failure to protect
their offspring from continued bullying victimization. And that you can
research that, you can just google it and find countless
numbers of children young adults who have tried to commit
suicide or have committed suicide because they were bullied bullying.

(07:23):
And if you listen to any of my podcasts, I've
said it discountless times. If we don't start really controlling
bullying without fear of repercussion from parents or guardians. You know,
we're gonna we're raising generations of bullies and that leads

(07:43):
to more violence in our society. Not to mention how
it hurts individuals. You know, I'm sure that each of
you listening may have an episode in school where you
could remember being bullied by someone and the way it
made you feel, and you don't forget it. You know,
it's something that really is. It becomes intrinsic and you

(08:06):
don't forget how they made you feel and exactly how
how it was handled, if it was handled at all.
So it's it's sad that it continues to be a
huge problem and really continues to it's kind of getting
out of control because we can't discipline children. I'm not

(08:27):
going to say like we used to. I'm not saying
that we used to have better methods, but something different
was working. You know, it's not certainly working now. So
I think we really have to make sure that we
are all on the same page in education and as
a society on how we're going to deal with bullies.

(08:53):
There was also a two year international research network in
which principal investigators and research research groups of twenty non
longitudinal studies participated by providing unpublished data in line with
the aims of our project. So some of this information
was never published, but it was collected in a scientific way.
Both special issues of journals offered up to date scientific

(09:15):
evidence on the topic, and two meta analyses were published
on the efficiency of school bullying in predicting depression and
offending later in life. In an update of the aforementioned
systematic reviews, it was found that bullying perpetration at school
was a significant predictor of offending up to about six
years later, even after controlling for other major childhood risk factors. Interestingly,

(09:40):
school bullies also had a significantly higher probability of being
depressed later in life compared with non involved children. Non
involved children just means the regular population results were equally
disheartening for the victims of school bullying. Farranting and others
found that bullying victim is a was a significant predictor

(10:01):
of depression up to about seven years later, even after
controlling for other major childhood risk factors. So let's put
this into numbers. Let's say you're fifteen years old and
you're being victimized by bully, you have a high risk

(10:23):
of being depressed because of that, but the bully also
has a significant chance of being depressed about even up
to seven years later. They're not happy with what they're doing,
but they're getting something out of it. A lot of
it is trying to protect themselves from being hurt first,

(10:47):
So bullying comes from comes from people who they themselves
are probably bullied or they are in some other way
being abuse, whether it's mentally, physically, etc. So not only
do they need help, you know, the victims need help

(11:08):
as well, but they need mental health therapy. We talk
a lot about our mental health system being broken. I do,
you know, I mean I work with very young children,
but all of these children have needs, have special needs,
and sometimes, you know, they have to do behavior therapy.

(11:31):
A three year old going to behavior therapy, and it's
because we have so many different things going on in
our lives that they're impacted in ways that we've never
seen before. So we have to the methods that we're
using to work with them aren't working, and it's really
a struggle. You know. As a developmental therapist, I see

(11:53):
many different you know, cultures, many different races. They have
different ways of looking at things. But everyone is in
agreement that we have to protect our children in what
is supposed to be the safest places they can be,
which is school and home, right, and we're not seeing that.

(12:16):
We can't control it in the home, but we can
control it in the schools to the best of our abilities.
So this really is a major subject. It's an issue
for me thinking back to just my experiences, which weren't
that bad. Any experience is bad, but it didn't cause
me to be depressed or change my way of thinking.

(12:38):
But other people it does. If you look back at
the majority, and I've got over sixty podcasts now so
you could look at, I'd say the vast majority of
offenders that we cover have reported being bullied or being
a bully or both, and that should that should terrify

(13:01):
you that we have this type of we have this
type of data from the mouths of the offenders, and
these are significant offenders that you know, these are serial killers.
It doesn't have to be a serial killer, you know,
it could be just someone who chronically bullies other people.

(13:25):
Some may even call them narcissists. Narcissism is abusive and
it can stem from you know, being a young child
and being bullied and not having you know, the optimal
parental support. It can stem from many things, but in general,

(13:48):
what we're looking at here is the bully and the
person being bullied has significant chances of being depressed later
in life and acting out in different ways. Longitudinal studies
have shown that adult violent criminals frequently have school records
of bullying and other forms of aggressive behavior, as I

(14:10):
just said, suggesting the intragenerational continuity of externalizing behavior. Perspective
studies have also pointed out the intergenerational continuity of school bullying.
In the Cambridge study in Delinquent Development, for example, the
bullies at age fourteen tended at age thirty two to
have children who are also bullies. That's terrifying to me. Terrifying.

(14:37):
You can pass this tendency on to your children. And
that's why I mean, I will beat this drum till
the day I die. We have to figure out a
better way in school to serve children who are being
mentally physically abused. We have to find a way to
stop it. We have to be very forceful, have to

(15:00):
stop suing people for trying to correct our children. That's
the biggest fear. Honestly, in education, we don't want to
do that. You know, we'll get sued for that. Well,
you know, maybe maybe there's something else we can do
that is just as powerful. I'm not sure what that is.

(15:21):
I wish I had the answer, but I think that's
kind of what we're looking at. What is it we
can do. No previous systematic review, however, has ever been
conducted to calculate an UnBias standardized effect size on the
association of school bullying with aggression and violence in adult life.
There probably has been a study. Now again, this is

(15:45):
from twenty twelve, so I guess it's someone picked up
on this and they've probably done a study. So this paper,
this journal article, is really addressing the gap in the
research literature literature and aims to examine whether bullying perpetration
at school can significantly predict aggression and violence later in life.

(16:06):
Given the overlap between violence victims and violent offenders, this
research will focus not only on bullying perpetration, but also
on bullying victimization. Notably, RIVERA, Shepherd, Farrington, Richmond, and Cannon
found that young males treated in an accident and emergency
department for assault related injuries were more likely to have

(16:27):
a criminal record than young males treated for accidental and
sporting injuries. Following this line of research, within this manuscript,
it is investigated whether victims of school bullying are also
significantly more likely to be involved in violence later in life.
We focus on prospective longitudinal studies because of the scientific
superiority of longitudinal research for the holistic understanding of antisocial

(16:50):
and criminal behaviors. Basically, this is telling us that, and
this is interesting, those young males who come into the
emergency department and who have been assaulted by others, we're
more likely to have a criminal record than those young
males who are coming in for accidental or sporting injuries.
That's a really good argument for people who say that

(17:15):
putting a child in a sport keeps them busy, keeps
them healthy, keeps them gives them determination, it gives them pride,
it gives them all these positive things, and that to
some degree is proven. We talk a lot about or
I do. I talk a lot about many of our

(17:40):
football stars. If you watch the biographies and stuff, they'll
say things like, it wasn't for football, I'd still be
in the streets or wasn't for football, I'd be dead
because they were being raised in an area that wasn't safe,
and most kids ended up being in a gang or
those have violent tendencies. They focus their energy on playing

(18:03):
a game that changed their life, and so it's important
for us. That's one reason that activities in school, high school,
grade school, middle school, it's important to have those because
we want our children to focus on the positive things
and experience positive things, not bullying, and we just don't.

(18:27):
We just haven't quite figured out how to stop bullying
or prevented as much as we should. That's also called
when we when we take a child and we divert
their attention from the negative to something more positive. It's

(18:47):
called attributional retraining, and I talk about that in several
several podcasts because it is a way to regrow that
grade matter in the frontal cortex. It is a way
to change someone's outlook on life. The trajectory of their
life can be changed with attributional retraining. So interesting topic

(19:09):
if you want to research a little leap into that,
a significant association between school bullying and violence later in
life would have many implications, both at a theoretical and
a practical level. On the one hand, significant results would
support the argument of a persistent, underlying violent tendency and

(19:32):
would therefore highlight the importance of early intervention research in
targeting school aggressive behavior at root before it develops into
more serious forms of regression and violence later in life.
So keywords here the importance of early intervention. I mean
early intervention is really what I've spent my life studying

(19:53):
and doing early intervention. The earlier we get to these children,
the more apt we are to be successful in redirecting
the trajectory of their life. You can the things that
we are most familiar with would be a child in

(20:13):
pre k getting speech therapy, and by the time they
go to kindergarten they graduate out of special education because
of the intervention they've received. Same thing with physical therapy.
We have children who are who maybe we're born and
maybe have a weakness on one side or the other,

(20:35):
or they haven't really had exposure to, you know, objects
like pens or pencils, so they don't hold a pencil correctly,
and they do physical therapy and occupational therapy throughout preschool
and younger I currently work with zero to three, so
we have children who are literally newborns in physical therapy.

(20:59):
But what that does is we're you know, the brain
is a magnificent instrument, and you can change You can
literally change your mind. You can change the development of
your brain. You can change the development if we intervene

(21:22):
soon enough, right, And that's the whole purpose of early intervention.
That's why we have all of these agencies that are
working to help children, so that we do not have
generations of people who have these disabilities who weren't helped
and therefore aren't able to really cope on their own

(21:44):
in the world. It is a growing problem, a growing problem.
If there is indeed a specific and persistent continuity of
aggressive and bind behavior, then special attention should be paid
in designing early intervention programs specifically for aggressive and violent individuals.

(22:07):
The argument in favor of a persistent underlying violent tendency
can be supported if the summary effects size for bullying
perpetration versus violence is substantially larger than the summary effects
size that was found in the previous meta analysis on
bullying perpetration versus offending. On the other hand, however, and
given the efficacy of school bullying and significantly predicting delinquency

(22:29):
and offending behavior later in life. Significant results arising from
the current systematic review would possibly favor the argument of
a more general underlying antisocial tendency. Again, that is, that
antisocial piece that we see in our violent offenders. The
argument of a more general underlying antisocial tendency can be
supported only if the summary effect size for bullying perpetration

(22:51):
versus offending is more or less the same magnitude as
the summary effect size for bullying perpetration versus violence. In
the case, it could be suggested that anti bullying programs
could be seen as an indirect form of both crime
and violence prevention. Absolutely, it could be I'm just going
to step out on that limb and say for sure,

(23:12):
if we have anti boiling programs, that is a it
says it could be seen as an indirect form that
I see it as a direct form of both crime
and violence prevention. If research directs towards a more general
underlying antisocial tendency, it would then also be reasonable to
suggest that both anti bullying and more general multiple component
program programs that address both bullying and other external externalizing

(23:37):
problems may be equally beneficial in interrupting the continuity from
school bullying to violence and offending an adult life. Absolutely,
this is true. I think you have to have you
have to have anti boiling programs, but I think they
also need to be coupled with other social problem I

(24:05):
say social problem programs, but that's really not what I'm
That's really not what I mean. We have to be
all inclusive when we do this. It can't just be bullying.
We need mental health therapy on many different subjects, and
we do have curriculum that does that. Is it done consistently? No,
it's not because the teachers don't think it's important or

(24:27):
the administration doesn't think it's important. It's because we are
so pushed to worry about math, language, art, science, all
those things are more important to the government than social behaviors,
which should be completely the opposite. We should always worry

(24:49):
about mental health. You know, are we producing a kind person,
a giving person, someone who is resilient other than I
would rather do that as think, Oh my, I want
to produce a child who knows all their math, their

(25:10):
math genius, or they were a they read on the
eighth grade level when they were in third grade. That's fantastic,
But are you changing the world. No, you're not. Are
you changing things in just your classroom for better if
that's all you focus on? Absolutely not, because I can
just about bet you almost every classroom you walk into

(25:33):
in the United States there's bullying occurring. And it may
not be it may not be the kind of bullying
we see on TV where it's very apparent. You know,
they're not pushing each other on the playground and taking
away lunch money. It's other very small ways that tend
to be you know, devastating to other children. So you know,

(25:57):
perhaps we need to educate our educators and exactly what
to look for. But I guarantee it's in almost every
classroom in the United States. Existing research supports the comorbidity
of aggressive, violent, and other externalizing problem behaviors and the
marked shared variance in risk factors predicting these behaviors. With

(26:18):
regard to the argument of comorbidity of externalizing problem behaviors,
based on analysis from three independent samples in the Pittsburgh
Youth Study, Lowber, Farrington, Stout, Hammer, Lober, and Van Cammon
showed that aggression, delinquency, conduct problems, and various other challenging
behaviors were significantly inter corelated of finding, which is in

(26:42):
line with our own research on bullying perpetration at school,
predicting delinquency and offending later in life, which sums up
everything I just said. Those who have externalizing problem behaviors.
It's not just that aggression, it's not just that bullying,

(27:05):
Its delinquency, conduct problems, and other various challenging behaviors, and
they're all related. So it can't just be a one
focus intervention. It has to be a multi focused intervention.
With regard to the argument of the mark shared variants

(27:26):
in risk factors predicting these externalizing behaviors, the same study
also showed that these problems and behavior, these problem behaviors
tended to share many risk factors. Specifically, they discovered that
of the significant risk factors for physical aggression, eighty four
percent were also significant risk factors for delinquency in the
youngest sample the youngest sample people the youngest sample, eighty

(27:51):
two percent were significant for delinquency in the middle sample,
and sixty eight percent were significant for delinquency in the
oldest sample. There was more of a tendency for a
child to be delinquent, which is any undesired behavior eighty
four percent compared to eighty two and sixty eight based

(28:13):
on ages. So the younger a child bullies, the younger
child is being bullied, the more chances they're at risk
for physical aggression that should terrify us. Within the body
of school research, a number of studies suggest that school
bullying is also highly correlated with other conduct problems, such
as violent and oppositional behavior. For example, a representative study

(28:38):
of fifteen thousand, six hundred and eighty six American students
in grades six through ten in public and private schools
found that both perpetrators and victims of bullying behavior had
a high probability of weapon carrying compared with non involved children,
not just in school, but also away from school. Another

(28:58):
study found that CD symptomle was predictive of bullying perpetration,
whereas ODD was predictive of bullying victimization. Let me tell
you a story. When I was in seventh grade, my
parents picked me up in front of the school, and
there were multiple other people in school standing out there

(29:22):
from school waiting to be picked up, so it wasn't abnormal,
but there was also there was also a teacher or
a teacher's assistant, someone from the school was out there
with us, so it was safe. And one day when
we were standing outside, the teacher assistant that was out
there said, I don't see this other student. I'm not

(29:46):
going to say your name. We don't see this other
student here today. Are they here or did they? Should
they be out here? Should I go in and see
where they're at, or you know? And I evidently I
answered no. I think she walked home today, And no

(30:08):
big deal, right, you would think. But when I came
back to school the next day, that girl, who was
in eighth grade, stopped me in the cafeteria and said,
I'm going to kick your butt after school today for
telling her that I walked home. And I said why,

(30:30):
I mean, what in the world does that matter? And
she said, she said, you got me in trouble, and
I'm going to kick your butt after school. And it
terrified me because I was very non confrontational. I certainly
didn't want to get beat up over something that shouldn't
be a significant issue. So from that day forward, you know,

(30:52):
I live in Tennessee and we lived in the country
and on a farm, and so everyone has a pocket knife.
Who wasn't a big deal back then, but I got
a pocket knife, and I carried that pocket knife with
me probably through my sophomore year of high school, because
I was terrified that she was going to find me
and jump me and beat me up. Now today, if

(31:13):
we did that, I would be expelled if they caught
me with that. I had no intentions of hurting anybody,
and I certainly wasn't a bully, but I felt the
need to protect myself. So this statistic or this data
speaks directly to me. I completely understand why someone would say,

(31:34):
you know, I'm being bullied or I'm being threatened, and
so I'm going to bring a weapon with me to school.
I understand it. I don't agree with it, but I
get it. It's that innocent, you know. And my family
never knew that, never knew that. I think my brother
and I were talking several years ago and I told

(31:56):
him about it. He was like, where Nord did you
get the knife? And I said, well, I think I
got it out of your desk drawer in your bendroom.
Because again, back in the day, everybody carried a pocket knife,
you know, especially because we live on a farm, you
always have a pocket knife. But you can't do that
anymore so. Notably, school bullying shares many risk factors with

(32:16):
offending behavioral conduct and other externalizing behaviors such as hyperactivity.
For instance, longitudinal data analysis of the Cambridge Study and
delinquent development show that low nonverbal intelligence, low attainment, hyperactivity,
and having a convicted parent at ages eight through ten
significantly predicted bullying perpetration at age fourteen. In the same study,

(32:40):
bullying at age fourteen significantly predicted antisocial behavior at age eighteen.
Do you see how this snowballs? It's snowballs. Children who
have low nonverbal intelligence, people who experience low attainment, people
who are hyperactive, have a convicted parent during these ages

(33:05):
of eight to ten, you could very significantly predict that
they would be a bullying perpetrator by age fourteen. So
what does that tell you? What does that tell us
a society? It tells me that if if we know

(33:28):
this information, then why between the ages of eight and
ten or before are we not implementing some form of
significant bullying antisocial violent offender therapies to these children. I

(33:55):
can't understand, really, I mean, I believe I've been I
was in a school system for nineteen years. There are
so many different things that we have to do. There
are so many things that we're required to do by
the state, by our local authorities, by our you know,
by the government, that all these other things seem to

(34:15):
be pushed down. But the fact of the matter is,
if we take care of our children mentally when they're younger,
we won't have as many of these problems. That's proven.
It's a proven fact. You know. We have tons of
intervention programs for children, for physical therapy, occupational therapy, feeding therapy,

(34:37):
behavioral therapy, and we also have some mental health therapy.
People just don't seem to believe that children, very young
children need mental health therapy. But I'm telling you that
they do. I'm telling you that they absolutely do. It
should be the number one thing we worry about, but
it isn't right. The issue of whether school bullying and

(35:00):
other externalizing behaviors later in life for different age and
context related manifestations of the same underlying antisocial dispositions has
many implications at both the theoretical and practical level. Previous
research has not given an answer to this matter, and
it is hoped that this paper will address adequately this issue.

(35:21):
Another important question is whether involvement in bullying influences the
individual in such a way as to engender more aggression
and violent behavior later in life. Establishing a causal, long
term link between school bullying and violence in adult life,
or establishing that bullying is in some way a stepping
stone towards violence, is a very demanding task and beyond

(35:42):
the aims of the current research. So what they're saying
is that's what their hope would be. That's not what
they're going to do with this particular research, But they
want a causal long term They want to find if
there is a causal, long term link twein school bullying
and violence and adult life. We're establishing that bullying is

(36:04):
in some ways stepping stone towards violence. You know this
argument that's gone on for years about how marijuana is
the stepping stone too harder drugs. They do have research
that supports that. They also have research that supports there
are many other factors that go into that. Most people

(36:24):
who smoke marijuana don't get into other more significant drugs
like meth or heroin or cocaine. But they continuously, you
know that the people who are for it continuously argue

(36:47):
that it needs to be banned. The people who are
for banning it, and then the people who say that
it can be you know, used recreationally, you know, or medically,
you know, they are the ones who find the research
that says that you have to have these There are
other tendencies you have to account for. If you're going

(37:11):
to say that this person started out with marijuana and
they ended on math, right, and this research talks about
that too. That's why we say, you know, there are
always factors that we have to consider, and everybody's different.
Everybody has a different experience growing up. Even in the

(37:32):
same household, you have a different experience growing up. So
they're not saying that this particular research causes that does
produce that link, that it's a stepping stone towards violence.
I'm telling you I believe it is, and I'd say
newer research probably has proven that a similar question is

(37:55):
central in an ongoing debate within the field of criminology
regarding the explanation of the strong correlation but you why
between prior and future criminal activity. Some researchers have argued
in favor of the theoretical model of state of dependence,
suggesting that the experience of crime materially influences the individual
in such a way as to engender more crime in

(38:17):
the future because of its undesirable effect on social bonds,
conventional attachments, and so forth. Other researchers have argued in
favor of population heterogeneity, suggesting that the correlation between past
and future criminal behavior could be attributed to the persistence
of time stable individual differences in an antisocial characteristic between

(38:38):
persons which can take various forms across life. Finally, others
have suggested a combination of the above two explanations. Transferring
the above theoretical model into the area of research on
school aggression, one may ask the following question question, could
school bullying have a causal effect on later violence, as

(39:00):
for example, involvement in bullying results in poor school bonding,
which in turn facilitates the increasing intensity of aggressive behaviors.
Or is it the case that a strong association between
school bullying and violence later in life could merely reflect
the persistence of an underlying antisocial tendency, which is also

(39:21):
called the population heterogeneit argument. Although this matter is beyond
the aims of the current research, it is of great
importance and essential to articulate. Yes, it is absolutely children
who are bullies. They aren't typically attached to a teacher.
They don't have that adult in the school that they

(39:42):
run to or they can trust. They also don't have friends.
They may have associations like a gang like associations, but
they're not friends, so it's different. There's no intimate experiences
between them. They don't share secrets. They're not friends that
do things outside of school. They don't go to each

(40:06):
other's homes and play video games. Bullies are typically very antisocial.
To date, systematic reviews in criminology and other fields have
focused primarily on intervention research failing to address naturally occurring
causes of delinquency or other externalizing and internalizing problems. Examples

(40:27):
of naturally occurring, non manipulated causes of internalizing and externalizing
problems could include divorce, brain damage, parental incarceration, or, with
reference to the current research, school balling. In risk factor research,
many naturally occurring probabilistic events such as broken homes are

(40:48):
getting married, cannot be randomly as designed due to ethical
or other considerations. Even though children are allocated to victim
versus non victim status in a planned manner. Victimization can
be regarded as a social intervention with specific outcomes. Our
analysis will also include bullying perpetration. Systematic reviews on risk

(41:11):
factors could advance theory and also help to develop effective
prevention programs. For example, it would be interesting to examine
whether victims of bullying suffer from low self esteem or
whether school boys lack empathy. Oh, my goodness, of course
they like empathy. Of course they like empathy. But again
twenty twelve study. Such findings based on relevant systematic reviews

(41:34):
could guide future intervention initiatives while also refining theories about
possible causes of bullying behavior. Establishing a significant long term
link between school bullying and violence and adult life could
potentially have important implications for policy and practice. It would
give a stronger voice to anti bullying agencies and would
also re establish the moral imperative school communities to create

(41:58):
an appropriate, violence free school climate for all youngsters. Amazing,
amazing research. It's the funny thing about this is it's ongoing.
It's ongoing. These type of studies are ongoing because you know,

(42:21):
I mean, what does it take for us to really
do something or find something that's effective. We put our
money in government. We put our money towards so many things,
but do we really address the problems that are at
the heart of the matter. I think it's a struggle.
I think that's I think that's why we struggle in

(42:43):
the schools. You know, it's easy to say that, oh,
this country spends four billion dollars on YadA, YadA, YadA.
But the proof of that is when you go into
a school in your community. You walk in and you observe,
and you see that there are bullies. You see that
they do have these issues, that children are being mentally

(43:04):
and physically abused at school by their peers, who, you know,
based on research, have themselves been victims. You know. It's systematic,
you know, and it's I'm not saying that there's something
we can do that would just like a magic one
fix everything, But I think that we have to look

(43:25):
towards the abilities of educating our educators and giving them
more power in the classroom to control children's behavior. Time
out doesn't work. I want you to know that. Right,
we say that that's appropriate. We do no touching positive behavior,

(43:48):
but time out does not work. In my opinion, I've
looked at it, used it for twenty four years. I
continue to use it because it is acceptable to use
and we really don't have other options that are you know,
that have been researched and that we know work redirecting children.

(44:09):
I mean, it works for a short time, but they
need much more comprehensive care than we can give them.
That's why we have all these different therapies. But I mean,
I have a family right now that we were struggling
a great deal on how to control some behaviors in
a two year old. But their background is such that

(44:32):
it's not just your typical two year old behavior. It's
much deeper than that. So, you know, therapy and positive
behavior support, educating the parents on how to deal with
these type of behaviors and how to prevent them moving forward.
You know, that's also a big key to this. What

(44:55):
do we do to prevent this from happening in the future.
You know, we can work go on it right now,
but we also need to prevent it from ever starting.
So there's a lot of there's a lot of indicators
we have to look at, and that's probably one reason
it's so very frustrating. This article tells me that not

(45:21):
only are people who are bullied by a bullying Not
only do they have long term effects of that negative effects,
but the person who is bullying has had throughout there,
even if it's a very short lifetime, they've had some
significant negative behaviors pointed towards them. Right, maybe their dad

(45:47):
is a bully and he was a bully in high school.
Maybe their mom was a bully, bullying, you know, all
her life. It's I say it's hereditary, but it's a
learned behavior, right, They're not born this way. It's a
learned behavior. Many of the things that we're trying to
fix in this society, they are learned to behaviors, and

(46:08):
it's hard to unlearn things when that's all you've ever known.
That's why it's such a struggle. But this is something
that we can control in our classroom, you know, And
so you know, I'll call to you as an educator
if you have bullying in the classroom and you don't
know what to do, or what you're doing isn't working,
I beg you to do some research on it, contact

(46:34):
some professionals. You can contact me, we can work on
it together. It's so important, you know, this is something
that has to be done. It really is. It really
is a problem for us and will continue to be
a problem for us until we get the pieces put
together that are going to help us make a change

(46:54):
for these children, no matter their age. So if you're
interested in this again, this is from the Aggression and
Violent Behavior Journal. It's sad that we even have to
have that, but we do we have that. It's a
great journal, has lots of great information in it. The
authors are Tophi, Farrington and luz El. As always, if

(47:19):
you have questions, you can contact me at doctor Kimberly
Cassidy eighty nine at gmail dot com. And I hope
you have a wonderful day.