A Polygenic Approach to Understanding Resilience to Peer Victimisation.
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ABSTRACT:
SUBMITTER: Armitage JM
PROVIDER: S-EPMC8770424 | biostudies-literature |
REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature
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| S-BSST170 | biostudies-other
Project description:BackgroundPeer victimisation is a common occurrence and has well-established links with a range of psychiatric problems in adulthood. Significantly less is known however, about how victimisation influences positive aspects of mental health such as wellbeing. The purpose of this study was therefore to assess for the first time, whether peer victimisation in adolescence is associated with adult wellbeing. We aimed to understand whether individuals who avoid a diagnosis of depression after victimisation, maintain good wellbeing in later life, and therefore display resilience.MethodsLongitudinal data was taken from the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children, a prospective cohort study based in the UK. Peer victimisation was assessed at 13 years using a modified version of the bullying and friendship interview schedule, and wellbeing at age 23 using the Warwick-Edinburgh Mental Well-Being Scale. The presence or absence of depression was diagnosed using the Clinical Interview Schedule-Revised at 18 years. A series of logistic and linear regression analyses were used to explore relationships between peer victimisation, depression, and wellbeing, adjusting for potentially confounding individual and family factors.ResultsJust over 15% of victims of frequent bullying had a diagnosis of depression at age 18. Victimisation also had a significant impact on wellbeing, with a one-point increase in frequent victimisation associated with a 2.71-point (SE = 0.46, p < 0.001) decrease in wellbeing scores aged 23. This finding remained after adjustment for the mediating and moderating effects of depression, suggesting that the burden of victimisation extends beyond depression to impact wellbeing. Results therefore show that individuals who remain partially resilient by avoiding a diagnosis of depression after victimisation have significantly poorer wellbeing than their non-victimised counterparts.ConclusionOverall, our study demonstrates for the first time that victimisation during adolescence is a significant risk factor for not only the onset of depression, but also poor wellbeing in adulthood. Such findings highlight the importance of investigating both dimensions of mental health to understand the true burden of victimisation and subsequent resilience. In addition to the need for interventions that reduce the likelihood of depression following adolescent victimisation, efforts should also be made to promote good wellbeing.
| S-EPMC7811215 | biostudies-literature
Project description:Background:Bullying victimisation is a global public health problem that has been predominantly studied in high income countries. This study aimed to estimate the population level prevalence of bullying victimisation and its association with peer and parental supports amongst adolescents across low and middle income to high income countries (LMIC-HICs). Methods:Data were drawn from the Global School-based Student Health Survey of school children aged 12-17 years, between 2003 and 2015, in 83 LMIC-HICs in the six World Health Organization (WHO) regions. We estimated the weighted prevalence of bullying victimisation at country, region and global level. We used multiple binary logistic regression models to estimate the adjusted association of age, gender, socioeconomic status, and parental support and peer support, and country level variables (GDP and government expenditure on education) with adolescent bullying victimisation. Findings:Of the 317,869 adolescents studied, 151,036 (48%) were males, and 166,833 (52%) females. The pooled prevalence of bullying victimisation on one or more days in the past 30 days amongst adolescents aged 12-17 years was 30·5% (95% CI: 30·2-31·0%). The highest prevalence was observed in the Eastern Mediterranean Region (45·1%, 44·3-46·0%) and African region (43·5%, 43·0-44·3%), and the lowest in Europe (8·4%, 8·0-9·0%). Bullying victimisation was associated with male gender (OR: 1·21; 1·11-1·32), below average socio-economic status (OR: 1·47, 1·35-1·61), and younger age (OR: 1·11, 1·0-1·24). Higher levels of peer support (0·51, 0·46-0·57), higher levels of parental support (e.g., understanding children's problems (OR: 0·85, 0·77-0·95), and knowing the importance of free time spent with children (OR: 0·77, 0·70-0·85)), were significantly associated with a reduced risk of bullying victimisation. Interpretations:Bullying victimisation is prevalent amongst adolescents globally, particularly in the Eastern Mediterranean and African regions. Parental and peer supports are protective factors against bullying victimisation. A reduction in bullying victimisation may be facilitated by family and peer based interventions aimed at increasing social connectedness of adolescents.
| S-EPMC7152826 | biostudies-literature
Project description:BackgroundA growing body of evidence from countries around the world suggests that school-based peer victimisation is associated with worse health outcomes among adolescents. So far, however, there has been little systematic research on this phenomenon in the countries of the former Soviet Union. The aim of this study was to examine the relation between peer victimisation at school and a range of different psychological and somatic health problems among Russian adolescents.MethodsThis study used data from the Social and Health Assessment (SAHA) - a cross-sectional survey undertaken in Arkhangelsk, Russia in 2003. Information was collected from 2892 adolescents aged 12-17 about their experiences of school-based peer victimisation and on a variety of psychological and somatic health conditions. Logistic regression analysis was used to examine the association between victimisation and health.ResultsPeer victimisation in school was commonplace: 22.1% of the students reported that they had experienced frequent victimisation in the current school year (girls - 17.6%; boys - 28.5%). There was a strong relationship between experiencing victimisation and reporting worse health among both boys and girls with more victimisation associated with an increased risk of experiencing worse health. Girls in the highest victimisation category had odds ratios ranging between 1.90 (problems with eyes) and 5.26 (aches/pains) for experiencing somatic complaints when compared to their non-victimised counterparts, while the corresponding figures for boys were 2.04 (headaches) and 4.36 (aches/pains). Girls and boys who had the highest victimisation scores were also 2.42 (girls) and 3.33 (boys) times more likely to report symptoms of anxiety, over 5 times more likely to suffer from posttraumatic stress and over 6 times more likely to experience depressive symptoms.ConclusionPeer victimisation at school has a strong association with poor health outcomes among Russian adolescents. Effective school-based interventions are now urgently needed to counter the negative effects of victimisation on adolescents' health in Russia.
| S-EPMC3661367 | biostudies-literature
Project description:Most interventions aimed at improving social interactions either target internalising or externalising problem behaviour in children. However, a recent review shows that a transdiagnostic approach might fit better to the diversity of problems within a group and within an individual (comorbidity). We examined the effectiveness of a transdiagnostic intervention, called Topper Training: a cognitive behavioural intervention in the peer group with parents included, that targets both internalising and externalising behaviour problems. A randomised trial with a waiting list control group was conducted, using 132 children with mild to severe psychosocial problems. Children were randomised into 77 intervention and 55 waiting list children (50% boys; age = 8-11 years). GLM repeated measures analyses yielded significant intervention effects directly after the training on parent-reported (but not teacher-reported) emotional symptoms (Cohen's d = .70), peer relationship problems (d = .41), and impact of these problems (d = .59). Significant effects were also found for child-perceived peer victimisation (d = .62), self-esteem (d = .45) and teacher-reported conduct problems (d = .42). Parent-reported effects on emotional, conduct problems and impact of the problems and child-reported effects on self-esteem were clinically relevant. No significant effects of Topper Training were found for prosocial behaviour and bullying. Within-participant t-tests in the intervention group between post-intervention and follow-up indicated that effects extended over a six-month follow-up period. Depression decreased significantly from post-test to follow-up. In conclusion, children with mild to severe internalising and/or externalising problems can benefit from the transdiagnostic Topper Training intervention.
| S-EPMC6881013 | biostudies-literature
Project description:BackgroundPeer victimisation is common and predicts increased internalizing symptoms. Low self-esteem, which is associated with both greater peer victimisation and higher internalizing problems, may help explain why victimised adolescents experience greater internalizing symptoms. Objectives of the present research were to establish the relationships between peer victimisation, internalizing problems, and self-esteem, and to test whether self-esteem mediates the effect of victimisation on internalizing symptoms.MethodsWe conducted a systematic literature search in Psychinfo, ERIC, Web of science, and Pubmed, following PRISMA guidelines. Inclusion criteria were: age 10-18 years; empirical studies that measured a) internalizing symptoms, b) self-esteem, and c) peer victimisation or bullying; design was either longitudinal or cross-sectional with a comparison group. Quality assessment were conducted using the Newcastle-Ottawa Quality Assessment Scale. We conducted random effects models and a meta-mediation analysis, with self-esteem acting as a mediator between peer victimization and internalizing symptoms.ResultsSixteen papers with a total of N = 35,032 (53% female) participants met the criteria for inclusion in the meta-analysis. The meta-analysis demonstrated an association between peer victimisation and both high internalizing problems (r = .31, CI 95 = .26 to.36) and low self-esteem (r = -.25, CI 95 = -.29; to -.22), and between low self-esteem and high internalizing problems ((r = -.38, CI 95 = -.42 to -.33), as well as an indirect effect of peer victimization on internalizing symptoms via self-esteem (ß = .10, CI lower = .07, CI upper = .13).ConclusionsPeer victimization, high internalizing symptoms and low self-esteem are all mutually related. Peer victimization partially mediates internalizing symptoms via self-esteem. Anti-bullying programmes may consider incorporating self-esteem building exercises in bully-victims. Limitations include high heterogeneity of results.
| S-EPMC10058150 | biostudies-literature
Project description:Based on the discovery by the Resilience Project (Chen R. et al. Nat Biotechnol 34:531-538, 2016) of rare variants that confer resistance to Mendelian disease, and protective alleles for some complex diseases, we posited the existence of genetic variants that promote resilience to highly heritable polygenic disorders1,0 such as schizophrenia. Resilience has been traditionally viewed as a psychological construct, although our use of the term resilience refers to a different construct that directly relates to the Resilience Project, namely: heritable variation that promotes resistance to disease by reducing the penetrance of risk loci, wherein resilience and risk loci operate orthogonal to one another. In this study, we established a procedure to identify unaffected individuals with relatively high polygenic risk for schizophrenia, and contrasted them with risk-matched schizophrenia cases to generate the first known "polygenic resilience score" that represents the additive contributions to SZ resistance by variants that are distinct from risk loci. The resilience score was derived from data compiled by the Psychiatric Genomics Consortium, and replicated in three independent samples. This work establishes a generalizable framework for finding resilience variants for any complex, heritable disorder.
| S-EPMC7058518 | biostudies-literature
Project description:Polygenic risk scores (PRSs) can boost risk prediction in late-onset Alzheimer's disease (LOAD) beyond apolipoprotein E (APOE) but have not been leveraged to identify genetic resilience factors. Here, we sought to identify resilience-conferring common genetic variants in (1) unaffected individuals having high PRSs for LOAD, and (2) unaffected APOE-ε4 carriers also having high PRSs for LOAD. We used genome-wide association study (GWAS) to contrast "resilient" unaffected individuals at the highest genetic risk for LOAD with LOAD cases at comparable risk. From GWAS results, we constructed polygenic resilience scores to aggregate the addictive contributions of risk-orthogonal common variants that promote resilience to LOAD. Replication of resilience scores was undertaken in eight independent studies. We successfully replicated two polygenic resilience scores that reduce genetic risk penetrance for LOAD. We also showed that polygenic resilience scores positively correlate with polygenic risk scores in unaffected individuals, perhaps aiding in staving off disease. Our findings align with the hypothesis that a combination of risk-independent common variants mediates resilience to LOAD by moderating genetic disease risk.
| S-EPMC9314356 | biostudies-literature
Project description:Peer review is embedded in the core of our knowledge generation systems, perceived as a method for establishing quality or scholarly legitimacy for research, while also often distributing academic prestige and standing on individuals. Despite its critical importance, it curiously remains poorly understood in a number of dimensions. In order to address this, we have analysed peer review to assess where the major gaps in our theoretical and empirical understanding of it lie. We identify core themes including editorial responsibility, the subjectivity and bias of reviewers, the function and quality of peer review, and the social and epistemic implications of peer review. The high-priority gaps are focused around increased accountability and justification in decision-making processes for editors and developing a deeper, empirical understanding of the social impact of peer review. Addressing this at the bare minimum will require the design of a consensus for a minimal set of standards for what constitutes peer review, and the development of a shared data infrastructure to support this. Such a field requires sustained funding and commitment from publishers and research funders, who both have a commitment to uphold the integrity of the published scholarly record. We use this to present a guide for the future of peer review, and the development of a new research discipline based on the study of peer review.
| S-EPMC7191707 | biostudies-literature
Project description:A primary goal of polygenic scores, which aggregate the effects of thousands of trait-associated DNA variants discovered in genome-wide association studies (GWASs), is to estimate individual-specific genetic propensities and predict outcomes. This is typically achieved using a single polygenic score, but here we use a multi-polygenic score (MPS) approach to increase predictive power by exploiting the joint power of multiple discovery GWASs, without assumptions about the relationships among predictors. We used summary statistics of 81 well-powered GWASs of cognitive, medical and anthropometric traits to predict three core developmental outcomes in our independent target sample: educational achievement, body mass index (BMI) and general cognitive ability. We used regularized regression with repeated cross-validation to select from and estimate contributions of 81 polygenic scores in a UK representative sample of 6710 unrelated adolescents. The MPS approach predicted 10.9% variance in educational achievement, 4.8% in general cognitive ability and 5.4% in BMI in an independent test set, predicting 1.1%, 1.1%, and 1.6% more variance than the best single-score predictions. As other relevant GWA analyses are reported, they can be incorporated in MPS models to maximize phenotype prediction. The MPS approach should be useful in research with modest sample sizes to investigate developmental, multivariate and gene-environment interplay issues and, eventually, in clinical settings to predict and prevent problems using personalized interventions.
| S-EPMC5681246 | biostudies-literature