Can Bullying Cause Psychosis?

Content/Trigger Warning: Please be advised that the article below might mention trauma-related topics that include types of abuse & violence that could be triggering.

Bullying can have devastating impacts on people, regardless of whether the bullying occurs when the person is young or when the person is an adult. Bullying can be traumatic, and we know that trauma is correlated with significant mental health symptoms, including nightmares, depression, anxiety, paranoia, hypervigilance, avoiding certain places, people, or activities, low self-esteem, a fear that something awful will happen, and also, in some cases, psychosis. A person experiencing psychosis is often experiencing hallucinations and delusions.

Something important to understand about mental health is that correlation does not equal causation. Two people may experience the same events and respond to them very differently. A rough childhood, even one that includes trauma, does not mean that the individual will grow up to experience mental health symptoms. However, bullying seems to be correlated with psychosis since we know that bullying can be traumatic, and trauma can make a person more likely to experience psychosis.

We form beliefs about ourselves, others, and the world around us throughout life, and we begin to form these at a young age. Although a person can most certainly change their belief system later in life (this is what modern-day therapy often focuses on), bullying can certainly impact a person’s way of looking at himself, others, and the world. For example, a common feature of psychosis is paranoia. If a person regularly experiences bullying at school (this is just as an example, as bullying can happen anywhere), they may want to avoid school and may be suspicious of others’ motives, feel that others are ought to get him, question others’ motives when they appear friendly, experience nightmares, and avoid healthy experiences and relationships that could have served as protective factors against the psychosis. Also, extreme stress is correlated with psychosis, and bullying can definitely cause extreme stress. Finally, a person who experiences bullying because of feelings of inadequacy, emotional pain, and avoiding healthy relationships could be more likely to abuse drugs, further increasing a person’s chances of experiencing psychosis.

In conclusion, we should be careful when we say something “causes” something else because many factors can play. For example, a person’s genetics can increase or decrease a person’s chance of experiencing mental health disorders associated with psychosis. However, bullying could likely increase a person’s chances of experiencing psychosis for the reasons mentioned above.