Children and adolescents who fall victim to bullying are more likely to have nightmares and other mental issues like anxiety, depression, psychotic episodes and even suicide, a new study finds.
If your child suffers from frequent nightmares, you may want to take note of it rather than shun it off as a common occurrence. Frequent nightmares may be a sign that your child is a victim of bullying and suffers in silence.
University of Warwick researchers found that 12-year-olds who experienced frequent nightmares or night terrors are likely to have been bullied when they were 8 to 10 years old.
"Nightmares are relatively common in childhood, while night terrors occur in up to 10 percent of children," said lead author Suzet Tanya Lereya, PhD, research fellow at University of Warwick in a statement. "If either occurs frequently or over a prolonged time period, they may indicate that a child/adolescent has or is being bullied by peers. These arousals in sleep may indicate significant distress for the child."
For this study, researchers examined data from the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children where 6,438 children were enrolled from birth and were interviewed about bullying when they reached ages 8 and 10 years. They were interviewed again at the age of 12 and at that time asked questions about parasomnias, including nightmares, night terrors and sleep walking.
At the age of 12, around 24.2 percent of the children experienced nightmares, 9.3 percent had night terrors and 12.6 percent sleep-walked. Additionally, 36 percent reported they had at least one type of parasomnia.
After taking into consideration influencing factors like psychiatric diagnosis, family adversity, IQ, internalizing and externalizing problems, sexual or physical abuse, domestic violence, and nightmares before 8 years, researchers could confirm the link between bullying and experiencing parasomnias.
Interestingly, researchers also noted that the children who were victims of bullying as well as bullied others didn't experience any type of sleep disturbance.
"Our findings indicate that being bullied is a significant stress/trauma that leads to increased risk of sleep arousal problems, such as nightmares or night terrors," said Dr. Dieter Wolke, professor of developmental psychology and individual differences at University of Warwick. "It is an easily identifiable indicator that something scary is being processed during the night. Parents should be aware that this may be related to experiences of being bullied by peers, and it provides them with an opportunity to talk with their child about it.
Bullying is a growing problem worldwide and mostly takes place among individuals below the age of 18. According to statistics, 20 percent of school going children are victims of bullying while 30 percent of individuals aged below 18 years admit that they've bullied someone else at some point in time.
The study was supported by the Economic and Social Research Council in the United Kingdom and findings will be presented at the Pediatric Academic Societies (PAS) annual meeting in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.
