Commentary: Guiding a Public Health Approach to Bullying

Abstract

Tragic events have served to focus the nation on possible profound and damaging effects of bullying on victims, on bystanders and on the school and community environments. Although a reliance on self-report and issues of definition and survey structure are concerns (Sawyer, Bradshaw & O’Brennan, 2008), recent analyses of national representative samples estimate about 30% of adolescents are involved in bullying with about half as victims (Wang, Ianotti & Nansel, 2009). The report by Wang et al. (2010) uses latent class analyses of a nationally representative sample of youth who completed the Health Behavior in School-aged Children (HBSC) study to identify a group of adolescents (All Types) who appear likely to be victimized by all types of bullying, including cyberbullying. The strong support for the relation between this type of victimization and a variety of psychological and physical sequelae suggest that intervening carefully at an individual level may be a useful strategy; however, such a strategy needs to be applied cautiously to avoid possible negative consequences and represents only one component of a comprehensive approach to this underestimated public health crisis.