--Original published at HannahsCollegeBlog
Bullying does not just happen in school by peers; but in the safety of a child’s own home, is they can suffer from the most aggression by their own sibling(s). Due to this at home bullying, it has shown to increase the likely-hood of young adults developing psychotic disorders. The University of Warwick, located in the UK, found that through one of their studies, sibling bullying is linked to mental disorders such as schizophrenia. The study also showed that it is not just the victim who is susceptible, but also the perpetrator, both sides of the act are affected.
The researchers wanted to go more in depth on this topic, looking for a correlation between sibling bullying and the development of a psychotic disorder. The study was conducted to answer four questions: is an association between experiencing sibling bullying (victimization or perpetration) at 12 years and the development of psychotic disorder by the age of 18; is a dose-response relationship between the frequency of experiencing sibling victimization or perpetration and psychotic disorder; whether the role taken in sibling bullying (victim, bully, bully-victim) is differentially associated with the psychotic disorder and whether being the victim in more than one setting is cumulatively associated with the development of the psychotic disorder.
The participants involved in this study were selected from a birth cohort. Once the children from the cohort reached twelve years, they took a sample of 3596 children who had previously filled out questionnaires. These participants were then separated into categories based on their results from the questionnaires; the categories consisted of the victim, the bully, the “bully-victim”, and non-involved. The results showed that out of the sample size, 664 came back as being victims, 486 were bullies, and 771 were bully-victims.
Once the participants were around eighteen years of age, the researchers conducted another test to show any symptoms or development of psychotic disorders. The results showed that out of all 3596 participants, 55 of them developed a psychotic disorder by the age of eighteen. The data collected from this study shows that victimized children have around three times the likelihood of meeting the criteria for a psychotic disorder. The data also shows that both sibling bullying and peer bullying can increase the risks of developing a psychotic disorder.
Results from the study indicate that any type of involvement in sibling bullying will increase the chances of acquiring a psychotic disorder; although, the strongest correlation was found with children who were pure victims or bully-victims. Based on the results of this study, parents and health professionals should become aware of the negative long-term effects of sibling bullying.
Word count: 429
Pop culture article word count: 440
Link to pop-culture article: https://www.studyfinds.org/children-bullied-siblings-more-likely-devleop-psychotic-disorders/
Reflection
When creating my own pop culture article, I did find it a little challenging to decide what to put in the article and what to leave out. This was a very difficult task because the study contained a substantial amount of information. But, deciphering which details were just little details, important to the psychologists, and which were larger details important to the broad topic of the study was the most challenging part for me.
When writing this article, I tried to fit all the five critical questions into the paper without going over the word count. The first question I included by letting the reader know what the independent and dependent variable were without straight out stating it. I included the second question by letting the reader know where the original study selected their participants from. The third question was included by stating how the researchers assigned the participants to different groups. For the fourth question, I included in my article, the casual claims that were made in the study. For the last question, I did try to aim my writing to the general public, by keeping the wording simple for people who do not know much about psychology, to understand.
My summary of the study and the news article are very similar, but also have a few differences. Both articles include the basics, where the study was done and what it was about. As well as including the number of participants involved and the results from the study. The news article, unlike my summary, includes a lot of quotes from psychologists and organizations, that I feel, are just extra information that is not vital to the study. The pop culture article also did not include the main points of what the researchers wanted to find by conducted the study. My summary included all four points the researchers wanted to answer by the study.
By experiencing these different projects, it has largely opened my eyes to the scientific side of the journalism world. By doing the first assignment, the pop culture article critique, it made me realize that maybe every article is not as scholarly as you might think. The pop culture article left out some major details about the study, but included quotes from psychologists, that the article could do without. The scholarly article critique made me realize how much work, information, and detail go into a scholarly article. Lastly, the Pop media project helped me put myself in other writers’ shoes and realize how hard it is to pick out details from a very large amount of information that is in front of you.