Children who experience bullying have higher rates of psychosomatic health issues, Medical Daily reported.
In a study in the journal Pediatrics, researchers reviewed 30 studies representing nearly 220,000 children from 14 countries.
Overall, researchers discovered that children and teenagers who were bullied had a significantly higher risk of experiencing health problems including headaches, stomachaches, back pain, neck or shoulder pain, dizziness and more. They were characterized as psychosomatic because no clear cause for the symptoms could be identified, Counsel and Heal reported.
Notably, the rates of psychosomatic symptoms decreased in samples that included more female study participants, Medical Daily reported.
“Given that school bullying is a widespread phenomenon in many countries around the world, the present results indicate that bullying should be considered a significant international public health problem,” the authors wrote in the study.
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