The Long-Term Effects Bullies Have on Their Victims

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The experience of enduring constant bullying or rejection in your early childhood can also result in an inexhaustible amount of damage to victims in later years. This is both self-evident and supported by an increasing amount of research done already. It is not necessary to be physically harmed in order to suffer life lasting pain. What is far more difficult to mend is the initial wound that bully victims suffer, which inflicts damage to their self-concepts and to their identities. Bullying is an attempt to instil fear and self-loathing. Being the repetitive target of bullying damages your ability to view yourself as a desirable, capable and effective individual. Persistent bullying may have a number of negatives effects on an individual initially, but the lasting problems have only yet begun to develop and will continue to do so. Peer rejection can wound young kids emotionally for good. Feelings of inadequacy can generate not only depression and loneliness, but a lifelong tendency to emotional problems. People who were bullied as children are more likely to suffer from depression and low self esteem, well into adulthood, and the bullies themselves are more likely to engage in criminal behaviour later in life. Playground jeers are a rite of passage for most school-age children, but for some kids, the teasing at school can turn into outright violence and abuse. Researchers say that as many as 1 in 10 children suffer physical attacks, name-calling and other social aggression at school, and a new study suggests that a child's risk of becoming a chronic victim of bullying may depend on factors that appear very early in life. Being victimized during middle childhood doubled the risk of experiencing definite psychotic symptoms in early adolescence (Lopez-Duran 3). "The consequences associated with high and chronic victimization are manifold and include

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