Youth suicide and bullying: what’s the connection?

via OUP Blog by Dorothy Espelage and Peter Goldblum

The role of bullying in suicide among our young people has been intensely scrutinized in both media and research. As the deleterious impacts on mental and physical health for both perpetrators and targets – suicide being the most severe – become more evident, calls for framing of the problem from a public health framework have increased. A scientifically grounded educational and public health approach to both bullying and suicide prevention is required.

So let’s look at the science regarding the connection between bullying and suicide. As with most highly emotional phenomena, there has been a tendency to both overstate and minimize the connection. As Jeffrey Duong and Catherine Bradshaw point out: while the prevalence of bullying is high (approximately 20% to 28%), “most children who are bullied do not become suicidal.” At the same time, children who have been bullied have an increased risk of mental and physical problems. Melissa Holt warns us that bullying should be considered one of several factors that increase a young persons risk for suicide. We must be careful, though, not to confuse correlation with causation. That is to say, that bullying most typically has an indirect effect on a young person taking their life, rather than being the sole cause. Finally, the suicide rate (both attempts and completions) among our young people is unacceptably high and requires systematic efforts for prevention and intervention.

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