At age 11, the children had a question put to them that many adults would rather soften: had other children picked on them? Three years later, another question mattered. By 14, some of those same children had begun to answer the world with distrust. By 17, that pattern was linked with a much higher risk of anxiety, depression, anger, hyperactivity, and other mental health problems.[1]

Children who are bullied face consistently higher risks of depression and anxiety symptoms later in life, and recent research suggests one reason is damaged trust. The harm is not only the episode itself, but the expectation it can leave behind.

In the UCLA Health and University of Glasgow study reported in 2024, researchers examined data from about 10,000 children in the United Kingdom who were followed for nearly 20 years.[1] The sequence they studied was blunt: bullying at age 11, interpersonal distrust by age 14, and mental health problems by age 17.[1]

The risk was large enough to be hard to dismiss as ordinary childhood roughness. Children who had been bullied at 11 and had become distrustful by 14 were roughly 3.5 times more likely to have mental health problems by 17 than children who were more trusting.[1] The problems included anxiety, depression, hyperactivity, and anger.[1]

Bullying is easy to picture as a contained scene: a lunchroom, a bus seat, a hallway, a phone screen after school. The child gets through the day, and the day ends. But the research points to something less visible than the incident itself. A child can come away with a rule about people: they may humiliate you, abandon you, or turn dangerous when the group allows it.

The scale is not small

From July 2021 through December 2023, 34.0% of U.S. teenagers ages 12 to 17 told the National Health Interview Survey, Teen that they had been bullied in the previous 12 months.[3] The share was higher among sexual or gender minority teenagers, 47.1%, compared with 30.0% among teenagers who were not sexual or gender minority.[3] Teenagers with a developmental disability also reported more bullying, 44.4% compared with 31.3% among those without a developmental disability.[3]

The same survey found the mental health difference in the present tense. Teenagers who had been bullied were nearly twice as likely to report recent symptoms of anxiety or depression as teenagers who had not been bullied.[3] Among bullied teenagers, 29.8% reported anxiety symptoms and 28.5% reported depression symptoms in the previous two weeks.[3]

A 2023 meta-analysis in BMC Psychiatry gathered 31 studies covering 133,688 children and adolescents.[2] Across those studies, young people who were bullied had a 2.77 times higher risk of depression than those who were not bullied.[2] Those who both bullied others and were bullied themselves had a 3.19 times higher risk than peers who were neither bullies nor victims.[2]

Why “getting over it” misses the injury

The CDC describes bullying victimization as repeated exposure to aggressive behavior by one or more people when the targeted person is unable to defend themself.[3] That imbalance is central. The injury is not only that someone said something cruel. It is that the child may learn that protest does not work, adults may not see enough, and peers may join in or stay silent.

In the UCLA and Glasgow findings, distrust was not a decorative detail. Researchers identified it as part of the pathway linking childhood bullying with later mental health problems.[1] That does not mean every bullied child will develop anxiety or depression, or that one childhood episode explains a whole adult life. It means the familiar command to “move on” can badly underestimate what bullying teaches.

Long after the original bully is gone, the learned posture can remain: waiting before speaking, checking faces before trusting, hearing a pause as a warning. The event may be over. The child may be older. But the seat saved by distrust can still be there, empty and waiting.

Sources

  1. HealthDay, “Being Bullied in Childhood More Than Triples Risk of Mental Health Struggles Later”
  2. BMC Psychiatry, “Meta-analysis of the relationship between bullying and depressive symptoms in children and adolescents”
  3. CDC National Center for Health Statistics, “Bullying Victimization Among Teenagers: United States, July 2021 to December 2023”