RESEARCH ARTICLE
Loneliness: The Cause or Consequence of Peer Victimization in Children and Youth
Shireen Pavri*
Article Information
Identifiers and Pagination:
Year: 2015Volume: 8
First Page: 78
Last Page: 84
Publisher ID: TOPSYJ-8-78
DOI: 10.2174/1874350101508010078
Article History:
Received Date: 25/10/2014Revision Received Date: 30/01/2015
Acceptance Date: 02/02/2015
Electronic publication date: 15/5/2015
Collection year: 2015
open-access license: This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Public License (CC-BY 4.0), a copy of which is available at: (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/legalcode). This license permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
Abstract
This article reviews the extant research literature on loneliness and peer victimization for children and youth, and explores the complex relationship between these two constructs. While lonely students who have few friends and receive limited peer support are vulnerable to being victimized by their peers, loneliness also emerges as a salient outcome of persistent and chronic peer victimization. The author discusses the phenomenon and incidence of bullying, the predictors of bullying and loneliness in children and youth, and reviews the literature associated with peer victimization in children and youth with disabilities, a population that is particularly vulnerable to being both the perpetrator and victim of bullying. The article concludes with a review of school-based intervention approaches to alleviate bullying in children and youth.