Slashdot Mirror
Bullying Affects Social Status?
An anonymous reader wrote to mention a ScienceDaily article about the social status effects of bullying on mice and men. From the article: "The results reveal neural mechanisms by which social learning is shaped by psychosocial experience and how antidepressants act in this particular brain circuit. They also suggest new strategies for treating mood disorders such as depression, social phobia and post-traumatic stress disorder, in which social withdrawal is a prominent symptom ... He and his colleagues also discovered that social defeat triggered an upheaval in gene expression in the target area of the circuit, the nucleus accumbens, located deep in the front part of the brain -- 309 genes increased in expression while 17 decreased."
In extreme cases, such as people with actual social phobias, being able to better control their disorder with anti-depressants sounds fine, but I hope this doesn't get turned around so that the "treatment" for bullying is to medicate the victim and ignore the actual cause (the actual bully)
Some bring out the best in others, some the worst. Some bring out far more.
Improved anti-depressant treatments are nice and all, but how about a treatment for the source of the problem: the bully. There are enough cases of kids picked on past the breaking point, that we should learn to focus on treating the cause not the symptoms of social abuse. Give the drugs to the jerks who feel the need to dominate and humliate.
We are all just people.