School-age bullying is a serious societal concern. The rise of social media has created a new set of problems. Parents need to be more vigilant
Childhood memories of school playground are often associated with a bully — an individual who uses intimidation to cause fear, distress, or harm to victims. Victims of bullying are often called with nasty or derogatory names; they are rejected or excluded from group activities and made targets of physical aggression. Rumors are spread about them, their belongings taken away, they are teased and threatened.
Bullying is no longer limited to the schoolyard, technology, including the Internet, email and text messaging on social media, provides new arenas for bullying to occur. It involves the use of force, threat or coercion to abuse, intimidate, or aggressively dominate the victim. The behaviour is often repetitive and habitual and occurs particularly due to imbalance of power — physical or social. Behaviours used to assert such domination include verbal harassment or threat, physical assault or coercion and such acts may be directed repeatedly towards particular targets. Bullying is a type of aggression intended to hurt other person and is characterised by hostility, imbalance of power, often done repeatedly over a period of time.
Perpetrator often targets his victims on the grounds of social class differences, religion, caste, gender, sexual orientation, appearance, social image, minority status etc. If bullying is done by a group, it is called mobbing.
Bullying comprises four basic types of abuse — emotional, physical, verbal and cyber, typically involving subtle methods of coercion, such as intimidation. Physical bullying is the use of muscle power like hitting, pushing, slapping, verbal is in the form of calling names, or insulting, emotional bullying is often in the form of black-mailing, excluding from group activities and cyber-bulling is done by spreading rumors on the Internet. Bullying at school and workplace is also referred as peer abuse.
It is generally believed that childhood bullying is just a part of growing up and a way for young people to interact with their peers. It must be understood that bullying is not a normal rite of passage; it can have serious long-term consequences. It is a chronic stress for the victim — a systematic abuse of power by the perpetrator, with aggressive behaviour or intentional harm-doing that is carried out repeatedly for vicarious gratification.
Childhood is the vulnerable period for bullying and the experience of being bullied gets biologically embedded with time. Those bullied by peers often suffer even worse long-term mental health effects than those maltreated by adults.
There is a growing body of research which strongly indicates that bully victims suffer emotionally and behaviorally. This suffering makes them lose confidence which may result in school refusal and even school dropout. This may further lead to loneliness, anxiety, depression and low self esteem and increased susceptibility to a variety of physical disorders. Poor school performance can possibly be a consequence of continued bully victimisation. Bullying causes difficulty in concentration, decreased ability to focus attention, which affects the ability to learn what was taught in the class room.
Maladjustment and perceived hostility in school environment makes the young child develop aversion towards studies. In adolescents, bullying increases the risk of suicide because of lost confidence. There have been instances of apparent bullying and occurrence of suicide in victims. Suicide attempt is not uncommon in such adolescents.
Individuals bullied frequently during their childhood are more likely to develop mental health problems during their adult life. They are at a high risk of developing anxiety and depressive disorders and a variety of somatic complaints, such as stomachache, headache, disturbed sleep, panic attacks, exhaustion and nightmares. Who are the perpetrators in bullyingIJ Research studies reveal that the individuals who had a disturbed childhood adapted the bullying behaviour. They often hail from the families having disturbed parent-child relationship.
Bullying is prevalent in all societies, all cultures and all geographical locations and varies in different social settings. In an Indian study, 60.4 per cent of the school children were found to be the victims of this menace — more boys than girls. The commonest forms were, calling names, making fun of one's looks, adverse remarks on caste background and disability. Physical abuse was reported by 10 per cent children. Only 39 per cent of the parents knew that their children were bullied and surprisingly, the teachers were ignorant of the whole issue. Some children also reported being bullied by elders at home.
Parents shouldn't assume that their child did something to provoke bullying. They should take it as an opportunity to work with their child to resolve it. The child should be asked what he thinks can be done to help him; he/she should never be asked to ignore bullying and brush the issue aside. Ignoring the problem can make the situation worse. Parents should support the child and gather information about his problem. Teachers must be adequately trained to tackle the problem and paediatricians should consider bullying as a possible cause for the illness of the child and plan for appropriate intervention.
(The writer is professor of psychiatry and chairman, Centre for Rehabilitation Sciences, Jamia Hamdard, New Delhi)