The Effects of Bullying (Part 3 of 3)

From Jim: This is thirteenth in a series of seventeen blog posts on workplace bullying and related topics running Monday, July 2, 2012 to Sunday, August 12, 2012.  
Events and people depicted are fictionalized composites from multiple sources.  Any resemblance to actual people or events is purely coincidental.  

A pastor writes:

I'm so exhausted!  Not just mentally, mind you, but physically too.  I’m tired emotionally, spiritually, you name it.  I know that I am in a vulnerable place.  I don’t like where my thoughts are taking me, but I can't seem to do anything about it. I've done all the things that I know to do, but still I find myself down and dejected.

I’ve tried praying.  My words seem to bounce off the walls. 

I have tried reading the Bible. The words seem dead on the page. 

I talked to a friend – he gave me pious platitudes. 

I'm not managing anything well right now, and just when I think things are turning around I get a hateful voicemail from the choir director that is just awful. Another shot below the belt. 

Here is a summary of results from some studies on workplace bullying. What follows is adapted from The Psychology of Bullying at Work: Explaining the Detrimental Effects on Targets, by Einarsen, Mikkelsen & Matthiesen, Department of Psychosocial Science, University of Bergen, Norway.  

Their introduction summarizes the work of previous studies on bullying in the workplace: 

• Effects of workplace bullying include social isolation and maladjustment, psychosomatic illnesses, depressions, compulsions, helplessness, anger, anxiety and despair.
• Acts of aggression and harassment by co-workers are associated with severe health problems in the target when occurring on a regular basis.
• To be the target of intentional and systematic psychological harm by another person, be it real or perceived, produces severe emotional reactions like fear, anxiety, helplessness, depression and shock.

Workplace bullying tends to change employees' perceptions of their work- environment and even life in general from one of safety, security and confidence to one involving threat, danger, insecurity and self-doubt. 

According to a number of studies, this can lead to pervasive emotional, psychosomatic and psychiatric problems in the targets.

Among Norwegian union members, 27% claimed that harassment had influenced negatively the productivity of their organisation. 

Also in their study among union members, significant relationships were found between those who experienced bullying and their experiencing psychological, psychosomatic and musculoskeletal health issues. The strongest relationship was found between bullying and psychological complaints. But targets also experienced musculoskeletal problems from exposure to bullying.

PTSD

Many targets of long term bullying at work may in fact suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder.  The diagnosis PTSD refers to a constellation of stress symptoms following a traumatic event, where the trauma is initially relived by returning to persistent, painful memories of the event, recurring nightmares, or by intense psychological discomfort to reminders (triggers).

Second, the patient avoids situations associated with the trauma, which may extend to difficulty remembering what actually occurred.  

Third, the patient may lack the ability to react in an emotionally appropriate way.  For example, they may have reduced interest in activities that used to bring joy, or show a limited general range of emotions, or feel as if he or she has no future.

Patients with PTSD show hypersensitivity, with

• sleeping problems,
• difficulty concentrating,
• by being very tense and irritable and with bursts of fury,
• by having exaggerated reactions to unexpected stimuli or
• By reacting with physical symptoms to reminders of the actual traumatic situations (triggering events, like one of your bullies walks into the room and your stomach ties up in knots). 

Even 5 years after bullying has stopped, as many as 65% of respondents reported symptoms indicating PTSD. A total of 76.5% scored above the base level for psychiatric pathology on the Hopkins Symptoms CheckList as opposed to 21.4% of females and 12.4% of males in a control group.

The extent of post-traumatic symptoms correlated directly with the intensity of the reported aggressive behaviors, and was especially prominent if the aggressive behavior felt degrading to the target.   

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