The Psychological Effects of Bullying
John Wells
Maryville University

Observations of Children on a Psychiatric Unit
This part of the paper will cover my observations of patient-to-patient aggression in the form of verbal, emotional, and physical bullying on an inpatient behavioral health unit, and its psychological effects. Over the span of 3 weeks I observed the interactions between children on a psychiatric unit where I work. Each week I spent one shift making observations. I do not typically work the children's unit, but I was able to float to this unit and make observations during the time where the kids were in the day area interacting. The type of bullying I saw the most was in the form of verbal.
Verbal bullying happened 100 percent of the time I was on the unit. It involved children of all ages, race, and gender. The verbal aggression was consistently focused on intellect, appearance, skin color, lifestyle choices, and ethnicity. The most common form of verbal aggression was directed at appearance and intellect. This was very interesting to me because our patients have general learning disabilities. I also saw emotional bullying. This type of bullying included the spread of rumors, excluding others from activities, and refusal of talking to other patients. The last type of bullying I observed was physical bullying. This type of bullying was less likely to happen on our unit. I felt that the presence of staff and security discouraged this type of bullying. However, it did happen once while I was working. It involved one patient shoving another patient.
My first week observations consisted of a group of 12 male patients. In this first week I only witnessed verbal bullying. One patient who was autistic had a difficult time reading the directions to a game. Another patient proceeded to mock him for not being able to read by imitating the exact way he was reading the directions. This patient began to isolate himself from the other patients throughout the day and stopped socializing with staff. I just want to note that I put a stop to every instance of bullying I witnessed. My job is not to let bullying persist. I am simply covering my observations of the occurrence. By no means would I ever promote or allow bullying to carry on. Another incident occurred shortly after the first one. This time two patients verbally assaulted another patient that clearly displayed feminine traits. They verbally assaulted him by directly calling him gay and indirectly assaulted by referring to everything he did as a gay. This patient was seen crying in his room later in the day.
The second week observations consisted of an entire different group of 12 male patients. During this week I observed both verbal and emotional bullying. At mealtime all the patients refused to sit next to a patient that looked like he hadn't showered in a week. They refused to sit next to him and complained that he smelt really bad. Throughout the evening all of the patients refused to talk to him. This was clearly an emotional bullying. As the day went on this patient became more and more withdrawn from his peers. The other staff recorded that he even showed signs of self-injurious behavior by hitting his head on the wall. I am not entirely sure if bullying caused this or not. The second occurrence of bullying on this day involved two patients. One patient repeatedly called another patient a loser for picking a Guitar Hero song that he did not like. He said, "Only a loser would pick a song like that". Staff recorded that the patient who was verbally bullied no longer wanted to play the game.
The third week consisted of a group of 10 female patients. During this week I observed all three forms of bullying. The first instance involved two female patients; one patient called another slightly overweight patient a pig for eating a cookie. She asked the patient, "Why are you eating a cookie, you pig?" The girl who was verbally bullied immediately started crying. The second occurrence involved three patients, two patients started to so spread a rumor about another patient. They said that she was weird because she liked to pick her nose. The patient in result never left her room for her remaining stay at the hospital. The final occurrence was physical bullying. While the patients were lined up to go into the dining room one was caught shoving another patient down on the ground. I do not know the reason for this action because it happened during my shift change. The girl was immediately discharged after the incident.
Website Review
There is no questioning whether or not bullying has long lasting psychological implications. I reviewed a research article posted on reuters.com called “Psychological effects of bullying can last years.” According to the article, children who were bullied or acted as a bully were at an increase risk for anxiety, depression, and panic disorder later in life. Research has clearly shown that bullying can be psychologically damaging. However, it is not clear on how lasting those effects are. Clinical psychologist William Copeland at Duke University Medical Center stated, "I was surprised that a decade down the road after they've been victimized, when they've kind of transitioned to adulthood, we would still see these emotional marks for the victims and also the bullies/victims." (Pittman, 2013) William led a study that included 1,420 Western North Carolina youth. The participants ranged from ages sixteen to twenty-six. The research team conducted interviews and asked them about their experiences with bullying between the ages nine and sixteen. The research concluded that the ones who had experiences with bullying were at an increase risk for a variety of psychiatric conditions. The study found that 6 percent of the participants who had no involvement with bullying had an anxiety disorder. As opposed to the 24 percent of participants whom had involvement with bullying had an anxiety disorder. This study highlighted how serious bullying can be.
Bullying is not just a part of growing up; it is a serious problem with psychological consequences. The study also showed that participants who reported being bullied were more likely to consider suicide, and be diagnosed with depression and panic disorder. This diagnosis was most likely to occur in young adulthood. This clearly reveals that bullying can be harmful to human development. Dr. Mark Schuster, chief of general pediatrics at Boston Children's Hospital stated, "It's not surprising that that would be the case, because in part they're reacting to the trauma of being bullied and they also carry with them the experience of having bullied." (Pittman, 2013) Overall, the study that was posted on this particular website stressed how serious the consequences of bullying are. It ended by suggesting that an adult needs to be there for the child that is being bullied in order to help them navigate and foster a safe environment.
Hot Topics
There are number of reasons why children become bullies and victims. According to the text, there are three types of unpopular children, they include neglected, aggressive-rejected, and withdrawn-rejected. The first type is neglected, where peers often reject the child. This type of child is psychologically left unharmed. The second type is called aggressive-rejected; this child is often rejected because he or she is antagonistic and confrontational. The third type is called withdrawn-rejected; this child is often rejected because they are anxious and timid. While I was on the psychiatric unit I most often observed the last two types of unpopular children. It is important to note that these two types of children share a lack of motional regulation, experience mistreatment at home, and misinterpret social situations. These two types of children are prone to becoming bullies or victims. To the best of my knowledge the children that were bullies or victims had a lengthy history of being mistreated at home. Without a doubt one of the most important periods in an individuals life is their schools years.
Most children find themselves attending school unless they are homeschooled. It is at school where children acquire various social skills, socialize, and strengthen themselves for their imminent careers and life. School can also be a point of unsettled and raging psychological processes. Children and teens are exceptionally sensitive to positive and negative influences. From the viewpoint of behaviorism, behavior has an aspect of social learning. These kids are essentially learning from their peers they are surrounded with. Witnessing bullying can also have a negative influence on an individual. The social learning study that clearly shows that kids imitate others is the Hammering Bubo study. Kids that were frustrated at Bobo were witnessed hitting Bobo with a hammer because they had witnessed an adult doing it. This surely is one reason why kids lash out at others in a violent way. Peer groups are very influential in the causation of bullying. Kids may find it entertaining when another child is mocked, excluded or hit. Additionally, the textbook states that there may also be a brain abnormality or genetic predisposition to bullying (Berger, 2014). Bullying can certainly be caused by a number of factors.
Bullying can have a tremendous impact on development. According to Erik Erikson’s stages of psychosocial development, most children are in the industry versus inferiority stage. This is a stage where children determine if they are industrious or inferior. They make the decision weather or not they are competent or incompetent, productive or useless, winners or losers. If a child is consistently bullied at school they can easily judge themselves as being inferior. In regards to development, feelings of inferiority can lead to substance abuse problems, along with mental health issues. Unsuccessful navigation through this stage will ultimately lead to a whole host of issues and impede on development. Bullying can also obstruct their self-concepts. A self-concept is an individual idea about their intelligence, personality, abilities, gender, and ethnic background (Berger, 2014). Many kids that are bullied are unable to develop a healthy self-concept. Many of the kids I witnessed getting bullied, were bullied because of their intelligence or abilities. These kids will have a difficult time developing a health self-concept. When an individual is constantly put down it’s easy to see how hard it can be to have a healthy self-concept. An individual in this state of mind can easily become depressed. An adolescent in a state of depression can be very troubling development. They ultimately retreat from activities and there depression disrupts their sense of normalcy. Depression is a mental health issue that can cause major issues with development when the child reaches puberty. Puberty is a time where emotions are going though ups and downs. Depression might occur because of rumination, which is when an individual repeatedly thinks about past experiences. If a child was bullied thought-out school they might repeatedly think about those experiences, which will result in depression. It is indisputable that bullying can disrupt, hinder and obstruct human development. By looking back on my observations and the review of the research study it is clear that bullying affects mental health, and when mental health is affected so is development.

Work Cited
Berger, K. S. (2014). Invitation to The Life Span. New York, NY: Worth Publishers.
PITTMAN, G. (2013, February 21). Psychological effects of bullying can last years. Retrieved August 21, 2015.