Childhood emotional and physical bullying in affective and nonaffective psychotic disorders

Bullying is common in childhood. Identifying developmental periods most sensitive to bullying may improve understanding of the link between bullying and psychotic disorders.

Forty-six individuals with schizophrenia spectrum disorders (schizophrenia or schizoaffective disorder; SZ), 53 with psychotic bipolar disorder (BP), and 51 healthy control (HC) participants completed the Maltreatment and Abuse Chronology of Exposures questionnaire. We tested for differences in the rates and severity of emotional and physical bullying across diagnostic groups, and also calculated odds ratios (OR's) for emotional and physical bullying in SZ and BP versus HC. As a primary goal of the study, we also examined associations between diagnosis, the timing of bullying in childhood, and bullying severity using nonlinear mixed effects models.

Patients with SZ (OR range = 3.41-21.88) and BP (OR range = 2.48-11.63) reported both emotional and physical bullying at higher rates than HC. In general, emotional bullying severity increased between ages 5-11 years, peaked at age 11, then decreased between ages 11-17. Notably, there was a Timing × Diagnosis interaction for both SZ (β = 0.09, p_FDR < .01) and BP (β = 0.09, p_FDR < .01) for the interval spanning ages 5-11. For physical bullying severity, only SZ patients showed a Timing × Diagnosis interaction for the period spanning 5-11 compared with HC (β = 0.05, p_FDR < .01).

Retrospective reports of childhood bullying suggest that the developmental period spanning ages 5-11 years may be a vulnerable period when emotional and physical bullying are most severe for people with psychotic disorders. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved).