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Although school bullying is an important social problem, its long‐term relation to mental health and behavioural outcomes is rarely investigated. The purpose of this paper is to address the relation between bullying in childhood and behavioural and emotional problems in adolescence.

Bullying and victimization were assessed in a sample of 557 German children (mean age 9 years). Nearly five years later anxious, depressive, delinquent, aggressive and other outcomes were assessed via self‐ and mother‐reports. Data analyses contained bivariate correlations and hierarchical regressions in which family and individual risk factors (measured two years before bullying/victimization) were controlled.

It was found that there were mostly small, but highly significant correlations between bullying perpetration and later antisocial behaviour. Among girls, bullying also predicted later symptoms of anxiety, depression and social withdrawal. The same was the case for victimization. Victimized girls also showed more antisocial outcomes. When controlling for other risk factors, bullying perpetration remained as a predictor of externalizing problems, however, there were no significant relations between victimization and internalizing or externalizing outcomes.

This paper presents longitudinal data on a large sample from a country under‐represented in the English‐language literature on bullying, also its findings reveal that bullying perpetration is a highly significant predictor of later antisocial and delinquent outcomes in adolescence.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the extent to which bullying victimization in school predicts depression in later life and whether this relation holds after controlling for other major childhood risk factors.

As no previous systematic review has been conducted on this topic, effect sizes are based on both published and unpublished studies: longitudinal investigators of 28 studies have conducted specific analyses for the authors' review.

The probability of being depressed up to 36 years later (mean follow‐up period of 6.9 years) was much higher for children who were bullied at school than for non‐involved students (odds ratio (OR)=1.99; 95 per cent CI: 1.71‐2.32). Bullying victimization was a significant risk factor for later depression even after controlling for up to 20 (mean number of six covariates) major childhood risk factors (OR=1.74; 95 per cent CI: 1.54‐1.97). Effect sizes were smaller when the follow‐up period was longer and larger the younger the child was when exposed to bullying. Finally, the summary effect size was not significantly related to the number of risk factors controlled for.

Although causal inferences are tentative, the overall results presented in this paper indicate that bullying victimization is a major childhood risk factor that uniquely contributes to later depression. High quality effective anti‐bullying programmes could be viewed as an early form of public health promotion.

The purpose of this article is to evaluate the prevention programme EFFEKT‐E that was designed for preschool children of depressive mothers and contains an intervention for children and for mothers.

Research was carried out in mother‐child clinics in Germany. In total, 220 strained mothers, who were screened for elevated levels of depressive symptoms, were enrolled in the control and 186 in the training group. For evaluation, mothers rated emotional disturbance and social competence of the child as outcome measures before and after the training. Changes in parenting behaviour, perceived parental competence and parenting stress were also assessed.

An effect on emotional disturbance of the child emerged (d=0.52) in the training group. Perceived parental competence increased (d=0.72) and parental stress decreased (d=0.23) significantly under training. EFFEKT‐E has proven to be a valuable programme for preventing depression in offspring of mothers who feel depressed.

The article identifies the significance of focusing on parenting as a preventive intervention in the mechanisms of familial transmission of depression and evaluation of a family‐oriented programme for young children designed to achieve this.

The purpose of this paper is to report on the association between bullying victimisation and various internalizing and externalizing behaviours including anxiety and depression, somatic problems, withdrawn behaviour, aggressive and delinquent behaviour.

Data for this research come from the Mater‐University of Queensland Study of Pregnancy and its Outcomes (MUSP) a prospective cohort study of mothers and their children which began in Brisbane in 1981, assessing the impact of experiences of being bullied at 14 years of age and YASR outcomes at 21 years of age. Brisbane is the capital city of the State of Queensland, Australia. The site for the research was the Brisbane Mater Misericordiae Mothers' Hospital (MMH), which is one of the two major obstetric units in Brisbane. In effect all pregnant women attending a publicly‐funded obstetrical service over a three‐year period were recruited to the study (about 50 percent of women attend public obstetrical services in Queensland).

The authors find that: first, there is no association between the experience of being bullied and young adult anxiety and depression, as well as some other outcomes (withdrawn, intrusive behaviour); second, for both males and females, there are increased rates of attention problems for those children who have been bullied; and third, males and females respond somewhat differently to being bullied, with males reporting more aggressive behaviour and females reporting more somatic problems.

Overall, the findings suggest that the likely impact of being bullied may not be widespread across mental health domains, and that the impact may differ somewhat depending upon whether the person bullied is a male or female.

This paper aims to report on the associations between reports of bullying victimization and bullying perpetration in childhood and subsequent mental health and adjustment difficulties in late adolescence/adulthood (16‐30 years) in a New Zealand birth cohort.

The paper uses data from the Christchurch Health and Development Study, a longitudinal study of a birth cohort of 1,265 individuals born in Christchurch, New Zealand in 1977 and followed to age 30.

There were general trends for rates of mental health/adjustment problems to be significantly associated with parental reports of bullying victimization in adolescence, and with parent and teacher reports of bullying perpetration in middle childhood or adolescence. Effect sizes were typically in the small to moderate range, and were reduced by covariate adjustment. After adjustment the majority of associations were statistically non‐significant. Effect sizes did not vary significantly with gender or the age at which outcomes were assessed.

The paper confirms that reports of bullying perpetration and victimization in childhood were associated with higher rates of later mental health/adjustment problems. Effect sizes were typically in the small to moderate range and, in the majority of cases, were substantially reduced upon covariate adjustment. Effect size estimates were not significantly different between males and females and did not vary with the age at which outcomes were assessed.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the relationship between bullying victimization at age 8 and anxiety and depression at age 11 in a large and ethnically heterogeneous sample from Zurich, Switzerland.

The authors present new analyses from the Zurich Project on the Social Development of Children and Youth (z‐proso) on the relationship between bullying victimization at age 8 and anxiety and depression at age 11.

Different measures of bullying victimization significantly predicted later anxiety and depression. Differences existed between measures of anxiety and depression from different informants.

First, the paper provides readers with an overview of the victimization data collected in z‐proso among an ethnically heterogeneous population sample of children in Zurich, Switzerland. Second, it provides results of bivariate and multivariate analyses on the relationship between bullying victimization and internalizing behavior. Third, the authors investigate if their results are robust across different measures of bullying victimization and across measures of anxiety and depression from different informants.

The purpose of this paper is to report an investigation of the relationships between victimization and later emotional problems among Japanese junior high school students. The effects of psychosocial risk factors and their role as predictors of the relationship between victimization and later emotional problems were also examined over time.

The authors' first concern was to determine whether victimization is, indeed, related to emotional problems during junior high school. The authors' second concern was to determine how long victimization or risk factors will be associated with emotional problems. The third concern was to determine whether there is a gender difference in the relationship between victimization and emotional problems. Emotional problems were assessed using self‐report questionnaire measures of depression and low self‐worth. This article used eight‐months interval data collections; September 2002 (Time 1), May 2003 (Time 2), January 2004 (Time 3), and September 2004 (Time 4).

The results section is organized into three parts. The first part presents correlation coefficients for each of the variables. The second part examines whether the experience being bullied is related to four risk factors, depression and low self‐worth. The third part examines whether risk factors and victimization are related to depression and low self‐worth over time. In each part the authors also examined whether results vary depending on gender.

The paper usefully shows that victimization at Time 1 predicted later depression at Times 2 and 3 for boys, but not for girls. Victimization at Time 1 also predicted later depression for boys after controlling for other Time 1 risk factors. Early victimization may be a unique predictor of later depression for boys, but not for girls.

School bullying is an important social problem with serious consequences. Many studies suggest that involvement in bullying (as a perpetrator or a victim) is associated with undesirable short‐term effects on the physical and psychological health of children and with undesirable long‐term effects on their future psychosocial adjustment as adults. The purpose of this paper is to investigate whether bullying perpetration predicts later criminal offending and whether bullying victimization predicts later depression.

The paper analyses data from the Pittsburgh Youth Study in which 503 boys who were originally assessed at age 6‐7 years have been followed up to age 19, with yearly or half‐yearly assessments.

Bullying perpetration in one age range, according to boys and mothers, predicted delinquency (reported by boys) in a later age range, and this relationship held up after controlling for ten major risk factors measured in an earlier age range. Bullying perpetration, according to boys, was the stronger predictor of delinquency. Bullying victimization (being bullied) in one age range predicted depression (reported by boys, mothers and teachers) in a later age range, and this relationship also held up after controlling for ten earlier risk factors. Bullying victimization according to mothers was the stronger predictor of depression.

The paper provides useful evidence which leads to the conclusion that bullying perpetration is followed by an increased risk of delinquency, and that bullying victimization is followed by an increased risk of depression.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate how children's involvement in bullying (as bullies, victims and bully‐victims) is related to longer term levels of various internalizing problems such as depression and self‐harm.

A prospective longitudinal design was used based on data from the Swedish Seven Schools Longitudinal Study. The authors also examined whether bullying/victimization experiences predict changes in internalizing problems.

Results vary depending on children's participation in bullying behavior as bullies, victims or bully‐victims.

Overall, the paper's findings highlight the importance of uniqueness of different bullying/victimization experiences. This study showed that the bully‐victims, followed by the victimized group, were more at risk for displaying internalizing problems. Bullies showed neither higher internalizing problems nor increases over time in symptom levels compared to the youths who were neither bullies nor victims.