Victims of bullying at work are 1.7 times more likely to commit suicide, according to a new study by the National Research Centre for Work Environment and Copenhagen University.

The significance of the study
There has been significant attention paid to the impacts of bullying in schools and among children, but bullying in workplaces – involving adults – has been subject to much less study, highlighting the significance of the disturbing revelations of this research.

The research, completed over the course of 12 months, included 100,000 participants and found that those who had been victims of bullying were more likely to have suicidal thoughts and were more likely to make an attempt on their own life.

Around ten percent of those involved in the study reported that they had experienced bullying to some extent during the last year, and the link between bullying and suicide was greater among men – male victims of bullying were at three times greater risk than men who had not been bullied.

Next steps
Thomas Clausen, the senior researcher of the study, has said that his team’s findings show that there is an urgent need to addres bullying in the workplace. To do so, it is necessary to consider the environmental factors that allow bullying to flourish.

According to Clausen, the primary cause of bullying may be a poor psychosocial working environment. To reduce bullying in the future, he says, it is necessary to identify and address these undesireable psychosocial conditions; ongoing well-being surveys at the workplace may be a good place to start.