Overview
Research has consistently found a relationship between being bullied and poor mental health, including higher levels of depression, anxiety, and a greater risk of suicidal thoughts. Despite the evidence highlighting the long-term negative impact being bullied can have on young people’s mental health, bullying is rarely defined or discussed as a traumatic experience. This may, in part, be because bullying and trauma come from different research traditions. In recent years, however, there has been a greater focus on aligning the two. Our work on the trauma of bullying includes several different projects:

The Trauma of Bullying
Working with Kidscape, a national charity in the UK, and Service Six we’re undertaking a programme of research examining bullying as a traumatic experience for children and young people. To find out more please visit our project page.

Bullying as a traumatic experience
Husna Hejazi is a PhD student examining bullying as a traumatic experience. Her current work includes a scoping review examining how bullying has been defined as a trauma in the literature and how trauma-informed practices have been integrated into anti-bullying programmes. To find out more please visit Husna’s project page.