Journal 1: Bully victimization: the childhood bullying and long term effects during

adulthood
Previous research had been studied upon for the purpose to gain insight regarding
the effect of bullying. Bully victimization: the childhood bullying and long term effects
during adulthood written by Sarah E. Dewey investigate the relationship between
bullying experience and how its effect can be present itself as posttraumatic stress
disorder (PTSD) symptoms in the adulthood, and this article also investigates whether
there exists a difference between the genders.
Before entering the discussion about the main study of this research, the author
also study upon previous research to gain understanding and insight about the effects of
bullying, particularly she study upon research that investigate how the effects of bullying
can interfere with the development stages which was originally developed by Erick
Erickson. She quote Olweus and also Sharp & Smith (as cited in Dewey, 2015), for the
definition of bullying was defined as negative, unwanted, aggressive action directed
towards the victim, repetition of pattern inflicted towards certain individual and the
aggressive dominance of a weaker person. And therefore, the act bullying is considered
as traumatic event because of the negative emotional response and experience that would
stimulate feelings of inferior, anger and shame. (Dewey, 2015) In light of that, the author
references Gleason, Alexander and Somers (as cited in Dewey, 2015) work which factor
in Ericksons developmental theory, that negative inferiority would impact the
development growth as the victim development of self- concept is low which leads to
maladaptive belief. These two factors would then combine and cause poor social skill
development and personal quality issues due to the lack of social interaction and

eventually lead to the inability to create meaningful interpersonal relationship with

others. Eventually, the trauma would be carried into the victims later life as they
transition into adulthood. The author argues this point by referring to Klomeks research
which suggested that bully victimization is a mediating factor that contributes to increase
psychological distress through anxiety, social phobia, eating disorder, loneliness and
depression, furthermore risk factors that influence from childhood also become a suicidal
risk factors (as cited in Dewey, 2015).
To further understand on how the effect of bullying can affect the development
process, Dewey refer to Cammack-Berry that latency stage is when a child developed
sense of self-concept and self-esteem. Self-concept is developed from perception and
thoughts of self; while self-esteem is derived from these thoughts and perception, and that
a childs self-esteem is influence by events, experiences, environment and external
awareness, and bully can impact these negatively and hence having bad influence on the
development of self on a victim. OConnors work (as cited in Dewey, 2015) also
proposed that failure to receive social support would result in the development of sense of
inferiority, and when these victims grow up into adulthood, they experience all kind of
negative impact such as depression, anxiety, social phobia, substance abuse, mental
health issues and others due to their development stage being altered and impacted them
negatively in their adult life (Dewey, 2015). In addition, Dewey also mentioned that
children who are publically humiliated and rejected by peers build intense aggression,
and victims of bullying had been known to externalize their aggression. Leary and others,
as referred by Dewey suggested that social rejection and chronic bullying may be the
reason for the concerning issue of school shooting (Dewey, 2015)

Given the premises of previous finding, the author was interested in identifying if
there was a clear relationship between childhood bully victimization and PTSD
symptoms in later adulthood. To achieve her purpose, Dewey conducted the study using
statistical study on subjects of age 18, using two questionnaires: Retrospective bullying
questionnaire and PTSD checklist. The data collected was then analyzed using ANOVA
using SPSS. Her results proved that there individuals who was bullied does display
higher symptoms of PTSD, and female in particular suffers more PTSD symptoms than
male. In addition to that, victims of physical bullying suffer more symptoms than victims
of verbal bully (Dewey, 2015).

Journal 2: Understanding the psychology or bullying

Understanding the psychology of bullying by Susan M. Swearer and Shelly
Hymel discussed the issue of bullying from a social ecology stand point. Their approach
view bullying from a more wholesome point of view and attempt to understand the
dynamics and various aspect of bully. This journal did not conduct any analysis and
instead they approach the issue by using previous research findings for their theory
crafting and reasoning.
Swearer and Hymel (2015) recognized the dynamic and continuum of the nature
and relationship of bullying, and they craft their model by consider the dynamic of the
bullying involvement, as victim, bully or both and proposed a social ecological, diathesisstress model for understanding the dynamic and impact of bullying. They consider the
involvement in bullying stressful event for both the victim and the bullies.

In relation to the interest of the assignment on the effect of bullying, Swearer and
Hymel refers to the work of Ryoo, Wang and Swearer (2014), with their findings on the
effects that bullying can have on both the victim, bullies or victim-bully. In their works, it
was suggested that frequent victim and perpetrators are the least stable subgroups and
that children may assumed different roles in the bullying scene across their school year,
for example, the victims of bully may started to become the bully themselves as they
became older and started to bully the younger grades, or, an individual might assumed the
role of both the victim and bully themselves such as being bullied to at school but was the
bully to their siblings at home. Swearer and Hynel also refers to the longitudinal studies
by Haltigan and Vaillancourt (2014) and Barker, Arseneault, Brendgen, Fontaine, and
Maughan (2008), with their study that track the trajectory of involvement of bullying, of
two age groups consists of 9-12 years old and 11-16 years old. In that study, it was
revealed that 73% and 75% of children mark up the low or un-involvement population,
while 11% of population was the bullies for both age groups, 10% and 3% for respective
age group consists of the victim and 2% for both age group consists of the bully-victim
type. This shows that there is a distinct pattern of increase of bully over time (victim to
bully subgroup). More importantly, in the study by Haltigan and Vaillancourt (2014),
each subgroup are presented with their own distinct patterns of involvement and each are
associated with different mental health outcome. For instance, the research shows that
stable victims displayed increased level of depression, attention deficit hyperactive
disorder and anxiety, while the stable bullies shows increase level of anxiety. However,
the research also demonstrated that being involved as both the victim and perpetrator
seems to compound the impact of bully, with them experiencing the worst influence

compared to either bullies or victim, being at greater risk for anxiety, depression, low
self-esteem, self-harm, suicidal intention, physical injury, substance abuse, absenteeism,
poor reception towards school, aggression and delinquency (as cited by Swearer and
Hymel, 2015).
In light of that, Swearer and Hymels diathesis stress model view bullying as a
stressful life event that place youth at risk for a host of negative outcome, regardless of
type of involvement, and they argue that stressful life event plays primary role in the
development of depression, anxiety and stress disorder. They also further illustrate that
peer victimization can lead to negative self-schema, such as the thinking of: I am a loser,
everyone hates me, leading to a perception towards self as unlovable and unworthy.
Bully perpetrators on the other hand can developed into negative self-other belief
operated on the basis of hostile schema about self and others, which leads to aggressive
social relationship in order to maintain power and control, wrongful sense of entitlement
and moral disengagement for their action in order to rationalize their bullying (Swearer
and Hymel, 2015).
References:
Dewey, E. S. (2015) Bullying Victimization: The Impact Of Childhood Bullying And
Long-Term Effects During Adulthood. ProQuest LLC
Swearer, M.S., Hymel. S. (2015) Understanding the Psychology of Bullying: Moving
Toward a Social-Ecological Diathsis-Stress Model. American Psychological Association
Vol. 70, No. 4, 344353. Retrieved from:
https://www.apa.org/pubs/journals/releases/amp-a0038929.pdf