Bullying can negatively affect a victim’s brain says Ottawa researcher

TORONTO – Bullying can not only affect a teenager’s everyday life but can negatively affect both their memory and ability to deal with stress in a healthy manner says Dr. Tracy Vaillancourt from the University of Ottawa.

The recent suicide of Amanda Todd, a 15-year-old girl from British Columbia, has again thrust the issue of bullying and prevention into the limelight.

While bullying can cause an immediate problem for children, Vaillancourt’s research, published in the journal Elsevier in 2011, suggests prolonged torment and abuse could severely affect a child’s development.

Cortisol, an important hormone used by the body to regulate stressful situations both physical and mental, is secreted during periods of stress. While the hormone can be useful from time to time, Vaillancourt says, “when you’re constantly stressed out, as the case is with people who are bullied,” your body can overproduce cortisol – which can have a negative structural affect on a person’s brain.

“The overproduction of cortisol affects the receptor sights for cortisol and that in turn impacts memory. So it actually causes memory deficits,” Vaillancourt said. “So it’s fair to say bullying causes memory loss in children.”

The hippocampus and the pre-frontal cortex – two areas of the brain responsible for memory – are the “most sensitive” to the effects of cortisol, Vaillancourt said, noting “those are the parts that are affected in our study.”

Prolonged exposure to stress can also affect a person’s ability to respond to new forms of stress, Vaillancourt said – a worry for bullied children as they grow older.

“There’s some evidence that prolonged exposure to stressors, such as bullying, actually changes… their hypothalamic pituitary adrenal axis, which is your stress response system, it actually changes the way it reacts to future stressors,” Vaillancourt said.

“So it could be the case that people who are bullied in childhood and prolonged exposure to bullying might actually overreact to future stressors, or under-react and both are not good.”

The differences in how children respond can also be seen in adolescents.

Some children, Vaillancourt said, internalize their feeling and as a result of bullying can become depressed, anxious or – as in the case of Amanda Todd – suicidal.

Bullying could also contribute to people externalizing their emotions. “So some actually get mad, so these kids end up bullying others in the future. They’re more likely to be involved in delinquent gangs, they’re more likely to drop out of school, they’re more likely to engage in disproportionate high risk behaviour – promiscuity, drinking and the like,” Vaillancourt said.

“So again it makes sense because humans have a fundamental need to belong, so if they don’t belong, they’re going to find any place to belong.”

No perfect program

The complexities of biology also make it difficult to formulate anti-bullying strategies, as every child is different – a child’s biological makeup can play a part in how well a child responds to the stress of prolonged bullying.

“In a sense we’re playing Russian roulette, were saying that ‘well kid A did ok so we don’t need to do anything,’ but kid A might have actually done alright because his or her biological profile is not one that would confer greater risk, while child B might be doing very poorly because of their biological vulnerability or predisposition,” Vaillancourt said.

However, there are certain measures which she says could help.

Increasing the presence of adults in schools, Vaillancourt says, would reduce the number of adult-free zones in which bullying most often happens.

In a survey she conducted of approximately 10,000 children across Ontario, children repeatedly said bullying happens most often when there is no adult supervision.

“They say they get bullied in the hallways, in the cafeteria, near the bus, and the like. But they don’t get bullied when there are adults present,” Vaillancourt said.

Children also need to be monitored while online, she said. With the advent of social communication, young children and adolescents are connected on an unprecedented scale and good parenting, Vaillancourt says, dictates that while children are young, their actions should be monitored.

Dr. Tracy Vaillancourt is a Professor and Canada Research Chair in Children’s Mental Health and Violence Prevention at the University of Ottawa. She is also an adjunct professor in the Department of Psychology, Neuroscience & Behaviour at McMaster University. Much of her research focuses on bully-victim relations. She is currently leading a study on the prevention and intervention of bullying.