“Bullying builds character like nuclear waste creates superheroes. It’s a rare occurrence and often does much more damage than endowment.” By Zack W. Van.
With new technological advancements, bullying has been increasing rapidly. The bully likes to target others to either manifest their dominance, aggression, stress or anger. This all has a negative impact on the bully and the victim. Bullying leads to mental health issues, physical problems and academic effects. According to the National Centre for Education Statistics (2017) a research conducted in the USA articulates that 20 percent students aged 12-18 years’ experience bullying globally. I was enthused by the movie Karate Kid, and my best friend who was bullied in school which led me to research on this topic.
Bullying leads to mental health problems, which range from stress and worries, experienced as fragments of one’s everyday lifespan to solemn long-term conditions. This involves changes in emotion, behaviour or thinking. They can be associated with distress and problems in social, work or family activities. Untreated mental illness can cause severe emotional, behavioural and physical health problems. Bullying can result in complications linked to mental illness including sorrow, reduced gratification of life, self-harm and harm to others, which includes suicide as well. Children who are bullied tend to miss work at school which results in absenteeism.
Bullying is a global problem which is slowly being highlighted. Bullying is not amusing and for a student it is arduous to face it until he or she speaks out for themselves. We all have to step forward against bullying because until we all speak out it will continue and grow. As Barack Obama once stated that “Each of us deserves the freedom to pursue our own version of happiness. No one deserves to be bullied”
Bullying has been a quiet, but ongoing problem in Pakistan as well. In many schools, teachers are not able to address the problem of bullying due to lack of knowledge, and burden of workload. Shamsi et al (2019) conducted a cross-sectional study to investigate 153 teachers’ knowledge regarding bullying in five private and public schools in Karachi. Of the students who were bullied; 70 percent had headaches, 56 percent backaches, 74 percent were depressed and 68 percent had low self-esteem. Sadly, more than half of the teachers lacked knowledge about bullying, and thus bullying symptoms went unnoticed.
Research was carried out to examine mental health, and bullying among Pakistani students. 335 Pakistani university students participated in this survey and the results showed that the students who were bullied showed signs of depression, were lonely, had sleep problems and suicidal ideation.
Another consequence of bullying can be academic problems, resulting due to a disturbed school environment and abnormal social interaction between bully and victim. These issues result in a number of problems like failure in exams and diminishing attendance. If this issue isn’t highlighted it can result in serious consequences as the student might not be able to establish a successful career and might resort to options like suicide.
Naveed et al (2019) conducted a cross-sectional study in which they surveyed 2315 children from seven public and private schools in Bahawalpur, Faisalabad, Lodhran, Rahim Yar Khan, Multan, Thatta and Nawabshah. 27 percent of the students were bullied at school which in turn affected their academic performance. Being bullied in the past was a strong indicator of becoming a bully themselves, moreover mothers who were housewives had children who were mentally sound. Working mothers had children with high chances of depression, emotional disturbance, poor school results, which resulted in them becoming victims of bullying. This highlights the patriarchal system that prevails in Pakistan.
The most potent way of countering bullying at schools is to have sessions with students so that they are aware about bullying, its consequences and solutions. Parents should keep a check on their children by asking them about school activities. School Faculty should be vigilant about students’ academics and proactive measures should be taken if they see something wrong or different. Counselling facilities should be available to seek help related to any social-behavioural problem.
The anti-bullying campaign in Greece “The Smile of the child” was founded in 2013, to protect children’s rights. For Europe’s Anti-Bullying Campaign (E-ABC), six organizations from Greece, Bulgaria, Estonia, Lithuania, Latvia and Italy worked together to identify students who were bullied. They devised an educational tool for professionals to identify the issue and solve it proactively. This successfully created an activation against bullying (European Commission).
“No Bullying Zone” is an anti-bullying campaign in Pakistan. They aim to run workshops for young people and families, understand what bullying is and how to stop it. This will help spread awareness on this not so spoken about issue in Pakistan (Being Women, 2018)
In the writing and researching of this article, I gained a heightened sense that bullying is a global issue and is prevalent in individuals due to deficient moral support and overdeveloped superiority-complex which needs rectification. I firmly believe that students should reach out to their parents, teachers and friends so that their moral support system is enriched, and this system must ease out the path carved for the students to express themselves beyond the boundaries of shyness, fear, biases, and social norms so that their confidence can again elevate to an adequate level. The issue of mental health problems was strongly linked to my question as when a student is bullied, he/she suffers with mental health issues which adversely influence student’s academic performance hence my question is answered.
Bullying is a global problem which is slowly being highlighted. Bullying is not amusing and for a student it is arduous to face it until he or she speaks out for themselves. We all have to step forward against bullying because until we all speak out it will continue and grow. As Barack Obama once stated that “Each of us deserves the freedom to pursue our own version of happiness. No one deserves to be bullied.”
