Bullying Prevention Across Lifespan

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Individuals with disabilities are more likely to be bullied than their peers regardless of whether it is within a school or workplace setting. Bullying refers to repetitive, negative actions directed toward a peer and characterized by a power imbalance. Victimization (i.e., singling person out for cruel treatment) and perpetration (i.e., bullying) of individuals with ASD often results from (King & Murphy, 2014):

Social blindness: Lacking understanding of social rules (i.e., social naivete) and social situations, e.g.,
- How to read other signals
- Understanding social hierarchies
- Knowing what is “cool”
- Brutal honest (e.g., “You are fat” or “You are ugly”)
- Knowing that what they do may be consider bullying by others
Disruptions of routines that may cause aggression
Low level of empathy in individuals with ASD

IAN data highlighted additional reasons with being bullied:

Clumsiness
Poor hygiene
Rigid rule keeping
Frequent meltdowns

Impact of Bullying

Since individuals with ASD tend to internalize the problems, a significant correlation between bullying and the following characteristics has been observed:

Communication problems
Low self-esteem
Increased risk for anxiety and depression, post-traumatic stress
Lower SES
Fewer friends

Bullying at School

Adolescents with developmental disabilities have higher rates of victimization (7-94% vs 12-41) and perpetration (15-46% vs 10%-44%). This negatively impacts both mental health and social engagement and integration of individuals with disabilities. Risk factors for individuals with ASD to be bullied:

Individuals with ‘chronic behavioral, emotional, or developmental’ problems were 3 times more likely to become a bully-victim than other children. (Van Cleave & Davis, 2006)
Individuals diagnosed both with ASD and ADHD were 4 times more likely to bully than typical children. (Montes & Halterman, 2007)
Bullying associated with behavioral problems in study of 120 children with ASD, while victimization associated only with peer problems. (Fink, Olthof, Goossens, van der Meijden, & Begeer, 2018)

A common challenge is parents not knowing that their child may be bullied. For example, in a study of 35 college-bound youth with ASD, 51% reported they’d been recent victims of bullying, but only 31% said the same (van Schalkwyk, Smith, Silverman, & Volkmar, 2018).

Bullying at a Workplace

Bullying does not stop with graduation. Individuals with ASD or neurotypical individuals may experience bullying. However, since bullying is about power, about 61% of bullying is done by people in power (e.g., supervisors), according to the Workplace Bullying Institute. Additionally, most of bullies are men. While women comprise 65-67% of victims of bullying regardless of the gender of the perpetrator.