Bullying by Siblings Increases Risk for Depression

*The following is excerpted from an article by the University of Oxford.

A new study has found that children who revealed they had been bullied by their brothers or sisters several times a week or more during early adolescence were twice as likely to report being clinically depressed as young adults.

They were also twice as likely to say they had self-harmed within the previous year compared with those who had not been bullied.

The findings, published in the journal, Pediatrics, are the results of the first longitudinal study to investigate possible links between sibling bullying and clinical depression and self-harm in young adults.

The research, conducted by the Universities of Oxford, Warwick, Bristol and UCL, suggests interventions are needed to specifically target a form of bullying which it says, to date, has been largely ignored by academics, policy makers and clinicians.

Although the bullying victims were more likely to be girls than boys, the link between being bullied by their siblings as a child and later mental health disorders was found to be similar for both boys and girls.

Source: The University of Oxford
http://www.ox.ac.uk/news/2014-09-09-sibling-bullying-‘linked-later-mental-health-disorders’