At first, life was good, Daniel Fitzpatrick wrote in his suicide note — lots of friends, good grades in school. But when his family moved from the area and then returned, the bullying began. “It was different. My old friends changed, they didn’t talk to me, they didn’t even like me.”
Those who were bullied by their siblings during adolescence are twice as likely to report being depressed and twice as likely to report self-harming, according to new research from the United Kingdom.
While other forms of bullying are commonly taken seriously and relatively well-researched, bullying between siblings often gets ignored or minimized. However, two recent studies call attention to the potential pitfalls of discounting the effects of sibling bullying. One of these studies indicates that children who bully their brothers or sisters take this activity less seriously…
From foot-binding to neck-stretching to skin-lightening, different cultures have defined beauty, and particularly women’s beauty, in ways that have seemed both extreme and unhealthy. There are ancient traditions in cultures around the world of doing things to women’s bodies (and sometimes male bodies, too) that seem to the outsider to be terribly unwise, unhealthy or…
Bullying is a term used to describe a wide range of aggressive actions intended to intimidate, manipulate, demean or socially stigmatize others. While these actions were once viewed as simply part of “growing up,” mental health professionals now understand that they can have a seriously negative short- and/or long-term impact on the mental, emotional or…
Stories of violence or suicide related to bullying have gained national attention in recent years. While school bullies have been around as far back as the one room schoolhouse, the impact of bullying seems to have intensified. Even if the victim does not succumb to violence in response, the damage done can be significant. A…
Bullying is an increasingly difficult problem in our world today. The British press is reporting that up to 65 percent of those diagnosed with an eating disorder say that bullying was a strong contributing factor. That rather astonishing figure represents a more than 40 percent increase of similar survey results from as recently as 2009.…
News stories about children and teens being bullied seem to play out in a never-ending scenario. We may be sitting at dinner, having left the television on, and we hear about some tragedy involving bullying of a high school teen that has resulted in the teen taking his or her own life. Bullying, it seems,…
It is a well documented fact that kids can be very mean. The child in the class that has something different from someone else – glasses, red hair, a weight problem, etc. – is often the target for ridicule. When that difference is weight and bullying results, that individual may have to deal with eating…