**1.2 Racial bullying**

Following on from the adverse childhood experiences mentioned above, there is an increasing number of publications examining the prevalence of bullying – a repeated aggressive verbal, physical, or psychological behaviour – among children and adolescents, and the psychological consequences of bullying. Research has found that those exposed to bullying as a student, whilst at school, has shown a strong association with a negative impact on mental and physical health later on in life [15]. Specific focus has been given for bullying based on stigmatised identity, for example their race. Racial bullying has many similarities in terms of characteristics with discrimination as the maltreatment of the individual is due to their membership of a socially disadvantaged group. An investigation found that within the youth population, racial bullying had significant associations with poor mental health and increase in substance use compared with non-stigma based bullying [16]. Rosenthal et al. [17] concluded similar findings, with greater experiences of racial bullying indirectly associated with multiple adverse health outcomes including an overall decrease in self-assessed health across the span of 2 years. Furthermore, emerging evidence suggests that bullying may be associated with the development of psychosis. Schreier et al. [18] investigated whether there was an association between peer victimisation and psychotic symptomatology in a cohort of adolescents aged 12 years and concluded that peer victimisation was associated with psychotic symptomatology in early childhood.
