Children & Bullying

When we think about heartbreaking anecdotes of children being bullied at school, or even some of our own painful recollections from a childhood experienced long ago, we can understand the importance of research studies into how schools can best protect heir young students.

Psychologist Dr Karyn Healy from QIMR Berghofer Medical Research Institute’s Child and Youth Mental Health Group recently reviewed leading international research on the effectiveness of anti-bullying programs over the past decade.

Interestingly, Dr Healy’s analysis of research on school anti-bullying programs concluded that programs that encourage bystanders to intervene may inadvertently harm the children they are aimed at protecting.

Dr Healy, who has specialised in school-based bullying for 25 years, said global research showed that bullying prevention programs overall result in about a 20 per cent reduction in bullying in schools and a 15 per cent drop in victimisation. However, in secondary schools the average benefit was zero.

‘Unfortunately, this means that programs in high schools are just as likely to make bullying worse as they are to reduce bullying,’ Dr Healy said.

Dr Healy said the complexity of most programs and the inclusion of multiple strategies could explain why it was difficult to pinpoint what was not working.

Most programs incorporate many different elements including the introduction of a whole-school anti-bullying policy, student lessons, improved discipline, playground monitoring, training for staff and parents, and work with bullies, victims, or peer bystanders.

Dr Healy said research showed the most effective anti-bullying programs focus on improving behaviour management, improved playground supervision, and parent involvement.

59% or 2.3 million students in Australia say they have experienced bullying, with one in five experiencing it weekly (20%).

Verbal bullying is the most common (50%), followed by physical (20%), social media (13%) and direct text messaging (11%).

80% of Australian students say bullying is a problem in their school.
Source: the above statistics are from a study by makebullyinghistory.org. Find out more at https://makebullyinghistory.org/public/

‘However, a lot of current programs focus on training and encouraging peer bystanders to get involved in bullying, which has not been shown to reduce bullying. A summary study showed that, overall, programs that encourage uninvolved bystanders to intervene were associated with significant increases in victimisation,’ she said.

‘Getting peers involved in helping resolve bullying has an intuitive appeal. However, we now have some evidence, which shows that at least some of these programs make bullying worse, which can add to the distress of victims.’

‘Having lots of peers involved makes the situation more public, which can be damaging to the social reputation of victims. Having a trained bystander step in also prevents the victim from handling a situation themselves, and may make them look weak in the eyes of the bully.’

Dr Healy explained, ‘Researchers have assumed that because bullying ceases within seconds following a peer intervention, that the intervention stopped the bullying. However, most observed incidents of bullying were only a few seconds long, regardless of whether a peer intervened. Furthermore, what happens in the seconds following peer intervention is not necessarily indicative of whether bullying recurs at the next break or in the days or weeks following.’

There is also evidence that natural peer interventions are different to how trained peers intervene.

Peers who intervene spontaneously are moved by empathy and concern for the victim. However, research suggests that empathy is less important for trained peer helpers.

‘There is evidence that peer helping actually increases the status of helpers. This could encourage over-helping to the detriment of the victim’s social reputation.’

Dr Healy said that students who want to step in shouldn’t be discouraged, but the research suggests students should not be actively trained to intervene, because there is no evidence this works, and some evidence that this may cause more harm than good.

Dr Healy said although not every program that included encouragement of peer involvement made bullying worse, caution was needed in selecting programs that were proven to help.

‘It’s important that decision makers at school and government levels ensure the programs they initiate in schools are backed up by evidence-based research. This means only using programs that have been specifically and carefully evaluated. Just because it sounds like a good idea doesn’t mean it will necessarily help. It could make things a whole lot worse for some victims,’ Dr Healy said.

While we have come a long way in identifying the mental health challenges caused by bullying, and accepting the need for programs to educate children, parents and teachers of the dangers, we now need to ensure we put in place programs and practices that help rather than harm victims.

The study findings have been published in the journal Child Development Perspectives.

59% or 2.3 million students in Australia say they have experienced bullying, with one in five experiencing it weekly (20%).

Verbal bullying is the most common (50%), followed by physical (20%), social media (13%) and direct text messaging (11%).

80% of Australian students say bullying is a problem in their school.
Source: the above statistics are from a study by makebullyinghistory.org. Find out more at https://makebullyinghistory.org/public/

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