Interdisciplinarity is at the heart of researcher Marie Pier Larose's work, both at the INVEST Research Flagship Centre and at the Turku Institute for Advanced Studies. Her work combines developmental psychiatry, behaviour genetics, and public health research.
The largest trial of its kind in the United Kingdom has shown how a low-cost, structured, anti-bullying programme KiVa can improve social dynamics in primary schools and reduce victimisation. Judy Hutchings identifies as KiVa’s strength its way of targeting the whole school and stripping bullies of the social reward.
Yuko Mori conducted a large international school survey for her doctoral dissertation in child psychiatry. The research showed that around 5% of young people had attempted suicide. Students who had been victims of both cyberbullying and traditional bullying were the most likely to have attempted suicide. The survey also found that around a third of young people feel unsafe at school and that young people rarely seek professional help for their mental health problems.
INVEST Research Flagship and KiVa Antibullying Program open up the opportunity for everyone to hear the latest information on school and online bullying.
The autonomous educational organization “Nazarbayev Intellectual Schools” has commissioned the KiVa School programme to its schools. Kazakhstan is thus the first Central Asian country to adopt an anti-bullying programme developed at the University of Turku.
The Jumeira Baccalaureate School in Dubai has recently joined the KiVa antibullying community.
Children who bullied others at the age of 8–9 have higher hazard for committing violent offences by the age of 31. This was shown in a Finnish Nationwide Birth Cohort Study conducted at the Research Centre for Child Psychiatry at the University of Turku, Finland.