Vicky Timmermanis, M.A.

I am a PhD student in the School and Clinical Child Psychology program at OISE/University of Toronto. My research is focused on understanding experiences of bullying in adolescents with ADHD. I think it’s important to understand bullying because people who bully others and who experience bullying often have long term difficulties with peers, depression, anxiety and negative feelings about school. My M.A. research found that adolescents with ADHD are both more likely to participate in bullying and more likely to experience bullying. Adolescents with ADHD who had experienced victimization had other social problems, including perceiving lower levels of social support. My PhD research is going to look further into bullying in adolescents with ADHD. We know there are lots of different kinds of bullying such as verbal (e.g. name calling), physical (e.g. hitting), relational (e.g. exclusion from a group) and cyber-bullying (e.g. sending mean emails or text messages). Are there certain types of bullying that adolescents with ADHD are more likely to experience? I’m also interested in learning more about the association between social difficulties and bullying. What is most closely associated with being bullied and bullying others – not having many friends, having difficulty interacting with other people or not understanding other people’s emotions?