Everyday thousand of teens wake up terrified of attending school. About one in seven schools, a child is either a bully or a victim of bullying. Bullying is simply defined as a type of aggressive behavior that involves intent to cause harm and a power imbalance (Olweus, 1999). Bullying can range anywhere from psychological, physical (involving kicking and punching), verbal or cyber abuse. Bullying among children can be considered as a form of abuse’ (0-). It has been put forward that bullying is a division of aggressive behavior and has been further characterized as repetitive and ‘an inability on behalf of the victim to defend him or herself’ (Farrington, 1993, cited it Sapouna, 2008). We learn from Sapouna (2008) that bullying can take the form of ‘verbal (name calling), physical (hitting, kicking) or relational (deliberate exclusion from a group, spreading of malicious rumors). After extensive research in Scandinavia, Olweus(1993, cited in Kumpulainen et al.,1998) proposed that bullying can be carried out by one or more adolescents and usually occurs on repeated occasions, and to some extent, it occurs in all schools. Recently bullying amongst young people has gain notoriety in the press due to the extreme results it has had on certain young individuals. An example of this is Sian Yates, a 13 year old girl who committed suicide after repeated bullying (Daily Mail, 2007).
Despite the press attention given to these cases, the extreme consequence of suicide does not occur in the majority of cases. Victims can suffer from a range of harmful effects such as humiliation, anxiety, depression, difficulty with interpersonal relationships, and emotional instability. This lead to the finding of Kumpulainen et al., (1998) that ‘bullying is a common phenomenon among children who are psychologically disturbed.’ The writer went on to say that there are ‘higher rates of psychological distress among both bullies and victims’ than those not involve. However, the
References: “Bullying”. Violence Prevention. 1 Dec. 2012 http://www.violencepreventionworks.org/public/olweus_history.page Dawkins, J. L. (1996). Bullying, physical disability and the pediatric patient. Developmental Medicine and Child Neurology, 38 603-612. Espelage, D. L., Holt M. K., & Henkel, R. R. (2003). Examination of peer group contextuals effects on aggressive behavior during early adolescence. Child development, 74, 205-220. Pelligrini, A. D. (2002) Bullying and victimization in schools: A Dominance relations perspective . Educational Psychologist, 37, 151-163.