Search results

Understanding the effects trauma has on refugee parents and consequently, their children, is the first step in interrupting the intergenerational transmission of trauma. This study aims to investigate the impacts of parental exposure to trauma pre-settlement on parent and child reports of developmental difficulties as mediated by parental post-traumatic stress symptomology and harsh parenting.

The study included 414 refugee children (age M = 14.04, SD = 2.00; 48.3% female) and their caregivers (age M = 41.78, SD = 5.24, 77% female). The sample was drawn from the Building a New Life in Australia study, a large, representative cohort study of resettled refugees in Australia. Only data collected where both parents and their children could be matched were used in this study.

Results indicated that trauma was significantly associated with increased parental post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptoms in all models and was negatively, albeit weakly, associated with lower levels of harsh parenting in the overall model which combined parent and child reports. Trauma also had a weak, positive indirect effect on developmental difficulties via parental PTSD in both the overall model and the model assessing parent-rated developmental difficulties. In all models, harsh parenting was associated with increased developmental difficulties, although harsh parenting did not act as a significant mediator of the effects of trauma or parental PTSD.

Results suggest that prior traumas had less of an adverse effect on parenting and child adjustment as was expected. Parenting, however, was strongly associated with poor child adjustment, indicating that this may be a key factor to encourage positive adjustment for refugee children.

The purpose of this paper is to examine whether young people who bully others in childhood (aged seven to 12 years old) go on to have worse health outcomes than non-bullies 39 years later. Furthermore, four categories of engagement in bullying behaviors (bully, victim, bully-victim, and not involved) were compared in order to assess differences in health and well-being in late adulthood.

A sample of 305 teacher-identified childhood bullies were selected from the Aberdeen Children of the 1950s cohort and matched with a sample of 305 non-bullies using propensity score matching methods. These groups were then tested for differences in six health outcomes (perceived support, depression, poor health, presence of a long-term illness, history of smoking, and frequent alcohol consumption) measured in late adulthood. Categories of bullying engagement (bully, victim, bully-victim, not involved) were also constructed using the matched groups and adult recollection of victimization, and differences between the four groups on health outcomes were tested.

Bullies were found to be significantly more likely than non-bullies to have a history of smoking and currently have a long-term illness and victims reported significantly lower levels of perceived support and greater depression than non-victims. Furthermore, bully-victims reported experiencing significantly less support and more depression than bullies, and were significantly more likely to currently have a long-term illness than non-bullies.

Results indicate that bullying in childhood is associated with negative health outcomes much later in life. Being both a perpetrator and victim of bullying was associated with worse health outcomes than either being a bully, victim, or not being involved. These results indicate that there are long-lasting implications for individuals involved in bullying almost four decades later in life.