Kids With Chronic Illness, Disability More Apt to Be Bullied

	Tweet

On top of all the other hardships they face daily, adolescent students living with a disability or chronic illness are more likely to be victims of bullying from their peers at school, a new French and Irish study finds.

“We were not overly surprised to learn that children with disability are more vulnerable to bullying, because of a lower self-esteem, sometimes differences in appearance or because they have special needs,” said lead author Mariane Sentenac, of the University Paul Sabatier in Toulouse, France.

Sentenac and her colleagues used data from the Irish and French 2006 Health Behavior in School-aged Children World Health Organization collaborative study. In all, 12,048 students ages 11, 13 and 15 participated. The findings appear online in the Journal of Adolescent Health.

Students responded to items on how frequently they had been bullied at school in the past couple of months. They also answered questions on whether they had a disability or chronic illness such as cerebral palsy, diabetes, arthritis or allergy. Twenty percent of the students in Ireland and 16.6 percent in France reported having one of these conditions.

The study showed that students who reported having a disability or chronic illness — no matter where they lived — were more likely to be bullied by peers than those who did not. For instance, in France, 41 percent of boys with a disability or chronic illness reported being bullied compared with 32 percent of boys without. Gender, however, was not a factor in being bullied — both boys and girls were equally victimized.

Also, when students with a disability or chronic illness were restricted from participating in school activities, they had a 30 percent additional risk of being bullied.

Mark Schuster, M.D., professor of pediatrics at Children’s Hospital Boston and Harvard Medical School, said that bullying of children with disabilities is a definite problem in the United States as well.

“Unfortunately, children who stand out in any way, because of their health, their race, their orientation, or anything else that distinguishes them from most kids in a school, can find themselves a target of bullying,” Schuster said.

The study suggested better family communication and anti-bullying prevention programs could help reverse this trend.

“In my view, good relations with teachers and parents could play an important role in preventing and detecting bullying behaviors between students because they are in a position to observe two different aspects of the adolescent’s life,” Sentenac said.

Journal of Adolescent Health: Contact Tor Berg at (415) 502-1373 or or visit http://www.jahonline.org

Sentenac M, et al. Victims of bullying among students with a disability or chronic illness and their peers: a cross-national study between Ireland and France. J Adol Health online, 2010.

###

Source:  Health Behavior News Service

RELATED STORIES:
Study identifies risk factors for kids’ snoring   After-school programs can increase physical activity of adolescent girls   Breast-feeding blocks pain of infant vaccination   Investigators identify successful weight control strategies for adolescents   Babies’ biological clocks dramatically affected by birth light cycle   Obesity top health issue plaguing Georgia’s kids, survey says   Maternal Intimate Partner Violence Linked to Childhood Obesity   Girls and children exposed to tobacco smoke benefit more from montelukast (singulair)   Moderately premature infants often ill early on   Gene therapy slows progression of fatal neurodegenerative disease in children   New UCLA study raises questions about genetic testing of newborns   Kids Headaches, Migraines Increase as New School Year Begins

Comments

[ + Post Your Own ]

Now you're in the public comment zone. What follows is not Armenian Medical Network's stuff; it comes from other people and we don't vouch for it. A reminder: By using this Web site you agree to accept our Terms of Service. Click here to read the Rules of Engagement.

There are no comments for this entry yet. [ + Comment here + ]