In a new study, researchers found that 13 year olds who were frequently bullied were three times more likely to be depressed than their peers when they became adults.
The researchers, all of them professors in England, used data from the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children, which has people answer questions across decades of their lives to study long term effects. In all, the researchers used data from 6,719 participants who answered questions about the types and frequency of their bullying experiences at age 13.
Students who reported being bullied at least once a week were more than twice as likely to be depressed later in life. Only five percent of teens who weren’t bullied went on to experience depression while 15 percent of teens who reported being frequent victims of bullying dealt with depression later in life.
Thirty-six percent of teens said they had been the victim of name calling, the most common type of bullying. The second most common type of bullying was theft, with 22 percent of respondents reporting bullies had stolen their belongings.
Most bullying wasn’t reported to the victim’s teachers or families according to the Los Angeles Times.
