|
 Researchers surveyed a nationally representative sample of roughly
1850 workers and followed them from 2005 to 2010. While less than
five percent of participants reported thoughts of suicide during the
study period, they were about twice as likely to do so after being
victims of workplace bullying.
“Our study adds to the understanding of how bullying is related to
thoughts about suicide by showing that the perception of being
bullied at work actually is a precursor of suicidal ideation and not
a consequence,” said lead study author Morten Birkeland Nielsen of
the National Institute of Occupational Health and the University of
Bergen.
At least 800,000 people worldwide take their own lives each year,
making suicide a leading cause of death, Nielsen and colleagues
write in the American Journal of Public Health.
Although psychiatric disorders are involved in the majority of
suicide attempts, most people with mental health disorders don’t
take their own lives, the researchers note.
The relationship between bullying and suicidal thoughts is something
of a “chicken and egg” problem, Nielsen told Reuters Health by
email. It’s difficult to determine which comes first.
In an effort to solve this riddle, Nielsen and colleagues surveyed
workers in 2005, 2007 and 2010, asking about their work environment
and mental health.
Researchers defined three main characteristics of workplace
bullying: an employee must be the target of systematic unwanted
social behavior; the exposure must occur over a prolonged period of
time, often with increasing frequency and intensity; and targets
feel they can’t escape the situation or stop unwanted treatment.
Over the course of the study, the average proportion of workers
reporting bullying ranged from 4.2 percent to 4.6 percent, while the
prevalence of suicidal thoughts varied from 3.9 percent to 4.9
percent.
There were no major differences in reports of bullying or suicidal
thoughts based on workers’ gender or age.
[to top of second column] |
While people who reported bullying early in the study were more
likely to later report suicidal thoughts, the reverse didn’t prove
true. Workers who said they had contemplated suicide at the
beginning of the study were no more likely to later report bullying
than participants who had never considered killing themselves.
One limitation of the study is its reliance on participants to
accurately recall and report any exposure to bullying or thoughts of
suicide, the authors acknowledge.
“There are probably some workers who are more likely to consider
suicide due to specific predispositions, whereas others are more
likely to consider suicide due to their recent exposure to
bullying,” Nielsen said.
With prolonged exposure to bullying and other forms of distress,
changes in the brain can occur, said Gary Namie, director of the
Workplace Bullying Institute based outside Boise, Idaho. The brain
can become flooded with glucocorticoids, commonly called stress
hormones, which reduce capacity for clear, rational thinking, Namie,
who wasn’t involved in the study, said by email.
For at least some people, workplace bullying might be a tipping
point toward considering suicide that mental health professionals
may overlook, focusing instead on family or financial problems,
Namie added.
The study findings suggest that the office problems merit a more
serious look.
“Being bullied is one cause of thinking about taking one’s life,”
Namie said. “Being bullied led to suicidal ideation and not the
opposite – this is important for that reason.”
SOURCE: http://bit.ly/1MgT750 American Journal of Public Health,
online September 17, 2015.
[© 2015 Thomson Reuters. All rights
reserved.] Copyright 2015 Reuters. All rights reserved. This material may not be published,
broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. |
