Children who are ostracized by their peers and bullied often become depressed, but new research suggests that the relationship may work the other way around as well: children’s depressive symptoms in elementary school precede social victimization and isolation later on.
Previous studies that tried to work out whether bullying causes depression, or whether depressed kids become magnets for bullies — or whether the two problems drive each other — have produced conflicting results. However, the new study found a clear path from depressive symptoms in 4th grade to being bullied in 5th grade and rejected more widely by peers in 6th.