Bullying is an activity systematically and repeatedly targeted at one person to intentionally make that person feel bad. Not all aggressive behaviour and not every dispute between children is bullying.
The bully may be an individual pupil or a group of pupils.
The parties to bullying are not equal; it is difficult for victims to defend themselves.
Bullying is a multidimensional phenomenon associated with group activity in which roles are rarely restricted to those of bully and victim. Roles arise from the expectations and needs of the group but they may label the actors and persist as long-term operational models.
A bully may have helpers and supporters.
Some group members may not approve of bullying but will not interfere with it, either.
Victims gradually fall into an unfavourable position in the group, becoming unpopular and regarded by others as worthless, odd and deserving to be bullied. Victims themselves may start to believe in such negative definitions.
Others may believe they are safe from bullying because they belong to the bullies.
Bullying may be a form of activity connecting the group.
Bullying may involve both direct bullying of victims, like teasing, calling names, shoving, hitting or kicking, or indirect damaging of their belongings, exclusion from the group or spreading of mean rumours. All or a part of the bullying may take place in the social media.
Bullying may be chronic and intentional or equally well random and thoughtless.
Boys typically encounter more physical bullying, while bullying encountered by girls is more indirect and associated with human relations.
Prevalence
Depending on the study method, 1/10-1/3 of all pupils are bullied. In secondary school, bullying is more selective and targeted partly at different pupils than in primary school.
Adults are often unaware of bullying, and taking steps to intervene is found to be difficult. At early school age, children are quicker to tell adults about being bullied whereas older children often try to hide it.
In a Finnish study where every third child reported having been bullied, only every fifth parent and 10% of the teachers had noticed the bullying.
Child victims often feel that telling adults will only make the situation worse.
Bullying may be revealed by symptoms such as refusal to go to school or in connection with examining for depression.
Bullying may also occur between pupils and teachers; pupils may bully their (deputy) teacher, and teachers may unjustifiably use different paedagogical methods and punishments for different pupils.
Background factors and consequences
Pupils who are shy, quiet, fearful, who cry easily or become anxious or differ in other respects from the group, such as new or overweight pupils or ones with learning problems, are more prone to be bullied. Having strong emotional reactions or provoking others on purpose may also predispose to being bullied.
Strong pressure for similarity in the group may increase bullying behaviour towards those experienced as different.
In reality, victims may not differ from the others at all, and changing to conform to the wishes of others will normally not stop long-standing bullying.
Bullying may sometimes be a subjective experience in a situation where no actual bullying has taken place.
Previous experiences of bullying, depression or social perception problems (in people with autism spectrum disorders, for instance) make people more prone to interpret neutral situations as negative.
Bullying is often an attempt to achieve social acceptance, dominating position or material benefit. It may also be used in an attempt to compensate for one's own perceived weaknesses.
As in any type of violence, also in bullying one can observe both reactive, impulsive bullying and proactive, premeditated and systematic bullying.
Thoughtless action or action derived from lack of social skills may count as bullying even if it is not meant to make the other person feel bad.
Bullies have more negative attitudes to others and more positive attitudes to violence than their peers. The features associated with bullies can mainly be regarded as predisposing factors, and not as characteristics of a bully. Such features include, for example:
Impulsiveness, getting easily frustrated, tendency to interpret a situation as threatening although it would not be
Dominance, aggressiveness, poor capacity for empathy
The way families act and raise their children may also be significant.
Overprotection and mental control predispose children to being bullied.
Unconcern, and insufficient guidance and control increase the risk of bullying behaviour.
There may be traumatic experiences or maltreatment behind bullying.
Bullying tends to continue if there is no intervention. This is particularly common among children who are both bullies and victims.
Psychological problems are more common both among children who bully others and among child victims. Studies have shown that mental symptoms are most common in children who are both victims and bullies. The longer the bullying goes on and the graver it is, the more probably it is associated with mental problems.
Various physical symptoms, such as pain and sleeping difficulty, are common in child victims but they occur also in bullies and in those who are both bullies and victims.
Being bullied causes stress and may trigger a posttraumatic stress reaction.
As adults, bullies have an increased risk of intoxicant abuse Adolescent Substance Abuse, violent and property crimes and traffic offences.
Victims have an increased risk of crime only if they had mental disturbances at the time of bullying, already.
In the Finnish ‘From a Boy to a Man' study, being a bully and a victim at primary school age predicted both an asocial personality disorder and anxiety disorder in adulthood.
Intervention is always necessary if bullying occurs at school.
This is the responsibility of teachers, school health care and parents.
All pupils/students should be asked systematically about bullying experiences. It is often easier to respond to an indirect, open question than a targeted question. Examples of questions:
"Do you feel safe at school?" "How do you get along with other pupils/students and the teacher?"
"Many pupils/students have experienced bullying at school or in social media. Has this ever happened to you or another pupil/student that you know?"
The student welfare group can make a more comprehensive plan to investigate the matter, especially if a child has definite mental symptoms or if earlier measures have not provided satisfactory results.
Programmes such as the KiVa school programme http://www.kivaprogram.net/ have proved effective, particularly if the whole school community is committed to following the programme.
It is of primary importance for the intervention to take measures both to stop bullying and to reinforce prosocial action in the whole community. Both victims and bullies need also individual support to learn new modes of action.
Info sessions, campaigns and agreements made by the class or the whole school to stop bullying may help to change group activity.
School bullying can be prevented in the lower years by giving clear and logical rules and in the upper years by high school motivation and clear learning targets.
Reinforcing prosocial activity (socially desired activity) and provision of meaningful other activity for example during breaks may reduce bullying.
Often it is also beneficial to reduce the opportunities for bullying (e.g. sufficient supervision)
As both victims and bullies may need child or adolescent psychiatric treatment, the need for such treatment should be assessed whenever bullying is seen at school.
Neuropsychiatric disturbances, depression, anxiety and posttraumatic symptoms, in particular, should be actively looked for.
As bullying may involve mental and/or physical violence, as well as defamation, see also youth advice and services by the police.
References
Sourander A, Brunstein Klomek A, Kumpulainen K ym. Bullying at age eight and criminality in adulthood: findings from the Finnish Nationwide 1981 Birth Cohort Study. Soc Psychiatry Psychiatr Epidemiol 2011;46(12):1211-9. [PubMed]
Silva JLD, Oliveira WA, Mello FCM ym. Anti-bullying interventions in schools: a systematic literature review. Cien Saude Colet 2017;22(7):2329-2340. [PubMed]
Stephens MM, Cook-Fasano HT, Sibbaluca K. Childhood Bullying: Implications for Physicians. Am Fam Physician 2018;97(3):187-192. [PubMed]