The Impacts and Interventions of School Bullying

Division of Psychology and Language Sciences, University College London, Gower Street, London, WC1E 6BT, United Kingdom

^* Corresponding author. Email: j_wang.20@ucl.ac.uk

Abstract

The large prevalence of school bullying and its adverse impacts have drawn strong societal interest. Abundant research has revealed that bullying victimisation and perpetration are harmful to children’s mental well-being. The negative effects could even persist in their adulthood. Hence, many school-based antibullying interventions were developed and evaluated. However, cases of school bullying are still constantly emerging nowadays. This paper aimed to delve into this issue by reviewing previous literature, describing the short-term and long-term impacts of school bullying, and evaluating anti-bullying interventions. The results demonstrated that bullying victimisation and perpetration predicted mental disorders in both childhood and adulthood. The whole-school intervention could effectively alleviate bullying victimisation, although had limited effects on reducing bullying perpetration. This paper systematically summarised key findings in the past 20 years on the topic of school bullying. The findings emphasized that the involvement of both schools and families, participation of a wide population, and specifically tailored interventions were essential to reduce bullying victimisation and perpetration.