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Childhood Bullying Can Lead to Chronic Disease in Adulthood

*The following is excerpted from an online article posted on PsychCentral.

A new research review suggests the stress a child feels when bullied in childhood may increase the risk of a chronic disease in adulthood.

Chronic diseases are often defined as an illness that will last a lifespan. Recent advances in understanding the negative health effects of chronic stress highlight a pressing need to clarify the longer-term health implications of childhood bullying, said Susannah J. Tye, Ph.D., of the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn.

Tye and her colleagues posit that being bullied during childhood might have lifelong health effects related to chronic stress exposure, including an increased risk for heart disease and diabetes in adulthood.

The research review appeared in the Harvard Review of Psychiatry.

“Bullying, as a form of chronic social stress, may have significant health consequences if not addressed early,” Tye said.

“We encourage child health professionals to assess both the mental and physical health effects of bullying.”

“Once dismissed as an innocuous experience of childhood, bullying is now recognized as having significant psychological effects, particularly with chronic exposure,” Tye and co-authors wrote.

Bullying has been linked to an increased risk of psychiatric disorders, although there are still questions about the direction of that association. Bullied children also have increased rates of various physical symptoms; recurrent and unexplained symptoms may be a warning sign of bullying.

Tye said, “It is important that we appreciate the biological processes linking these psychological and physiological phenomena, including their potential to impact long-term health.”

Studies of other types of chronic stress exposure raise concerns that bullying — “a classic form of chronic social stress” — could have lasting effects on physical health.

Any form of continued physical or mental stress can put a strain on the body, leading to increasing “wear and tear.” This process, called allostatic load, reflects the cumulative impact of biological responses to ongoing or repeated stress; for example, the “fight or flight” response.

“When an individual is exposed to brief periods of stress, the body can often effectively cope with the challenge and recover back to baseline,” Tye said.

“Yet, with chronic stress, this recovery process may not have ample opportunity to occur, and allostatic load can build to a point of overload. In such states of allostatic overload, physiological processes critical to health and well-being can be negatively impacted.”

With increasing allostatic load, chronic stress can lead to changes in inflammatory, hormonal, and metabolic responses. Over time, these physiological alterations can contribute to the development of diseases including depression, diabetes, and heart disease as well as psychiatric disorders.

Chronic stress may impair the child’s ability to develop psychological skills that foster resilience, reducing their capacity to cope with future stress.

The authors emphasize that although no cause-and-effect relationship can be shown so far, future research holds potential.

Source: PsychCentral
https://psychcentral.com/news/2017/03/13/childhood-bullying-can-lead-to-chronic-disease/117597.html