Past Event

This year’s Pickering Centre Public Lecture will be held on Thursday, September 25th, 2025 at Carleton University (Richcraft Hall, Atrium).

The neurobiology of bullying victimization: Implications for mental health across the lifespan

Dr. Tracy Vaillancourt

Mental health problems frequently begin in early adolescence and often persist across the lifespan, yet the developmental roots and enduring consequences of these issues remain underappreciated. The neurobiological consequences of bullying victimization and their implications for mental health from a lifespan development perspective is examined. Drawing on longitudinal data and contemporary genetic, epigenetic, and neurobiological research, I demonstrate how early social adversity (i.e., bullying victimization), alters biological systems involved in stress regulation. These biological changes can contribute to poor mental health trajectories that span from childhood into adulthood, increasing the risk of depression, anxiety, suicidality, and reduced socioeconomic functioning decades later. I advocate for a lifespan approach to mental health prevention and intervention, one that recognizes bullying victimization not as an isolated event, but as a developmental insult with lasting neurobiological, psychological, and economic consequences.

Congratulations to Dr. Tracy Vaillancourt, the 2025 Pickering Award winner! Dr. Vaillancourt is the Tier I Canada Research Chair in School-Based Mental Health and Violence Prevention in the Faculty of Education at the University of Ottawa. Her groundbreaking research was instrumental to the integration of bullying into the Ontario Education Act, documenting the long-term impact of bullying across domains of children’s functioning, and showing that stress responses to bullying are linked to memory deficits and downstream mental health and academic achievement problems. Dr. Vaillancourt’s research has earned over $150 million in funding support, described in over 200 peer-reviewed publications and hundreds more invited talks, conference presentations, book chapters, and op-eds. As a leader, Dr. Vaillancourt is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada and leading its Pandemic Learning Loss working group in partnership with the Canadian Commission of UNESCO. She is past-President of the International Society for Research on Aggression. Finally, Dr. Vaillancourt has an impressive record of student mentorship, having received two teaching awards and supervised dozens of graduate students and post-doctoral fellows, many of whom wrote enthusiastic testimonials describing her pivotal role in their careers.