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March 25, 2006

About Bullying

Bullying has been around for a long time and around in many places. The earliest reference to it in the English language goes back over three hundred years and involves grown men who are compared to a woman killing her man. Like their English predecessors, girls today as well as boys are involved in bullying. Bullying is a world wide phenomenon as will be seen by reports from Norway, England, South Korea and the United States.

Bullying for too long had been viewed as just a phase of growing up that would pass. Professor Dan Olweus in Norway was the first to seriously study bullying, starting in 1970. In 1983, after three Norwegian boys committed suicide, he was commissioned to conduct a research and intervention project on bully/victim problems. He developed a Bullying Prevention Program which is in use now in many countries including the United States.

The program requires school intervention on three levels: schoolwide intervention, including development of schoolwide rules against bullying; classroom level intervention, including classroom meetings about bullying and peer relations; and individual-level interventions, including individual meetings with bullies and victims and their parents. The Olweus program has been adopted by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services as a model program that has resulted in a 30-70% reduction in student reports of bullying.

There has been an increasing psychiatric interest in bullying and a recognition of how widespread and serious it is. In 1993 The Anna Freud Centre in London held a one-day conference on bullying and published the results. In 2001 the Journal of the American Medical Association published an article on bullying behaviors among U.S. youth and its association with difficulties in psychosocial adjustment.

In October, 2005 at the annual meeting of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry there was a three hour panel on bullying. The panelists discussed bullying from the developmental, social and psychiatric/medical symptoms points of view. It is important to identify and help students who are at high risk for bullying not only for the sake of the present but also because they may transfer their interactional style to other relationships across the lifespan. Nine percent of adult workers in Europe reported being bullied by other adults.

A significant number of girls bully and/or are bullied, usually by other girls, in physical as well as verbal and isolative fashion. Bullies, victims and bullies who have formerly been victims reported physical and emotional symptoms such as headaches, stomach aches, dizziness, nervousness and sleeping difficulties. Suicide continues to be a possible outcome of bullying. Psychiatric treatment, including psychotherpy, is sometimes necessary for both perpetrator and victim.

Posted by admin at March 25, 2006 09:25 AM