Bullying victimization is a form of chronic psychological stress due to personal aggression that is repeatedly directed at the person with less power than the aggressor.
Nearly one in 10 children worldwide is regularly bullied by peers, and 30 percent of children are sometimes bullied, according to the National Academy of Sciences Engineering, and Medicine.
In addition to the ethical dilemma that bullying represents, international research published in 2022 found that bullying has become "a serious medical crisis like contracting a deadly virus."
Bullying causes great harm to the child he is exposed to (agencies)
The researchers, from the University of Ottawa in Ontario, Canada, were able to see the damage caused by bullying and document it through brain imaging and scanning, and concluded that child abuse and peer bullying hurt brain regions in very serious and permanent ways.
The harm is that victims fail to understand social cues, to think clearly, and to control their behaviour and emotions.
The researchers pointed out the need to raise awareness of the mental damage caused by bullying by having public service announcements about the devastating invisible neural scars left by bullying and child abuse in the brain, because the damage can be repaired once it is identified in the child.
The impact of bullying on children's minds
The study's researchers conducted an analysis of the impact of bullying abuse on children's brains, and acknowledged that the negative effects of bullying affect certain areas of the brain, leading the bullying victim to misinterpret someone's facial expressions or overreact. Also, the victim's brain may read facial expressions as angry or threatened as a result of certain areas of the brain being disrupted by bullying.
Victims may also struggle to use their rational minds to solve problems or make decisions, and the ability to think about challenges and problems is weakened as a result of bullying.
The brain of victims of bullying also struggles to self-regulate or modify their behavior, and similarly their troubled brain may struggle to manage emotional emotions or withdrawal.
The researchers further found that the way bullying harms brain regions can lead to "the development of mental health problems including anxiety, depression, psychosis, mental and physical disorders and eating among bullied children." Some children may also develop emotional sedation associated with further brain damage seen in post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).
In addition, children targeted for bullying often experience a drop in their grades, and poor academic performance is likely to be the result of neurophysiological changes such as those found in abused children.
The most serious effects
The researchers documented some of the physical changes in abused and harassed brains that may appear in children who are abused by adults or bullied by their peers, represented by signs of "repressed neurogenesis, stress-related myeloid growth retardation as well as distorted apoptosis."
Scientists know that our brains produce new cells throughout our lives, but brain imaging has shown that brain abuse or bullying puts the birth of new brain cells, or neurogenesis, at risk and in some cases stops.
Repeated bullying can leave neural scars in a victim (Getty Images)
Those who are bullied and abused also have the natural process of apoptosis or cell death. The cycle of cellular birth and cell death is thus placed in a state of imbalance, as the victim's brain struggles to generate new cells while a large number of cells die at the same time. As a result, children suffer from anxiety, depression, post-traumatic stress disorder, and poor academic performance.
No one knows.
Despite all the negative effects scientists have found, victims rarely know that their brain is sick and needs help. Bullies and those who abuse others also do not know that the way they behave causes damage to the victim's brain in front of them.
According to the researchers in the study, brain injuries caused by bullying are more annoying because they are not visible to the naked eye, so most of society does not even know it happens, and victims of bullying suffer in silence. But if the injury is identified, the care needed for the brain to repair and recover is possible.
Author Jennifer Fraser (author of "The Bullied Brain") says that since we don't learn much about the brain in school and we don't talk about the brain, we don't know that this key organ is actually severely damaged by all forms of bullying and abuse. This is well documented and can already be seen through brain scanning.
Fraser adds that neuroscience has proven that repeated bullying can leave nerve scars and is associated with shrinking hippocampus size. The lesser hippocampus is a part of the brain associated with memory, learning and emotional regulation and is linked to depression and Alzheimer's.
Researchers have documented some physical changes in abused and harassed brains (Deutsche Welle)
She also says you may see enlarged amygdala on a brain scan of someone who has been bullied or severely abused. This makes perfect sense because the amygdala is a part of the brain involved in detecting threats and danger.
If someone is always on high alert because their brain is programmed to believe that it is only a matter of time before the next attack, the amygdala becomes large.
Parents, teachers, coaches, doctors, social workers and mental health professionals should use every opportunity to help children understand that the epidemic of mental illness in young people can be reduced if it is widely known that all forms of child abuse and bullying damage the brain.
Physical bullying can obviously damage the brain, but much more dangerous is emotional and psychological bullying, social relationships and cyberbullying, as the damage it causes to the brain is not visible. Emotional neglect, neglect and ostracism lead to fatal but invisible damage.