Bullying leaves an irreversible effect on young brains so much so that they try to flee from stressful situations rather than solving them in later life, a study has revealed.
Researchers in the United States who were trying to establish a link between childhood bullying and adulthood violence, found an unexpected connection between the timing of victimization and its effect on the subjects, a report published in Nature magazine said.
During the study that involved about 1,500 college students, the researchers found that bullied children are often not aggressive. On the contrary, they tried to hide from stress in their adulthood and in later life.
"The effect was most prominent when the bullying happens late on in puberty," Matthew Newman, who led the research at the University of Texas, said.
For some of the victims, stress that comes along with bullying is thought to cause depression and violence in their personalities in adulthood.
The study, however, showed that the stress that comes with bullying is significantly reduced if children have a strong network of social and family support, the report said.
The researchers interviewed the students as to how would they react and cope up with stressful situations. Men who had been bullied late in puberty were more than twice as likely to flee from the situation, the report said.
However, those who had been bullied all through adolescence were more likely to evade stressful situations as compared to the students who had never been bullied, Newman said.
Admitting that the results may seem counterintuitive, he said, "Older children might be expected to cope better with being bullied. Children who are bullied earlier in puberty may be better prepared to cope with the more stressful experience of later victimization and so suffer fewer consequences in adulthood."