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from the won't-someone-think-of-the-children dept.
I found this recently-published article, Children who are bullied suffer worse long-term mental health problems than those who are maltreated interesting. Here are some excerpts:
A new study published in The Lancet Psychiatry shows that children who have been bullied by peers suffer worse in the longer term than those who have been maltreated by adults.
The research is led by Professor Dieter Wolke from Warwick's Department of Psychology and Warwick Medical School. The study is due to be presented at the Pediatric Academic Societies (PAS) annual meeting in San Diego on Tuesday 28 April.
[...] Professor Wolke said: "The mental health outcomes we were looking for included anxiety, depression or suicidal tendencies. Our results showed those who were bullied were more likely to suffer from mental health problems than those who were maltreated. Being both bullied and maltreated also increased the risk of overall mental health problems, anxiety and depression in both groups."
An abstract and full article (pdf) are available.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Ethanol-fueled on Monday May 04 2015, @02:27PM
As somebody who during alternate periods was bullied and also a bully, it's totally true. The problem is, what do you do about it? How severe do you let it become before adult intervention? Do you think it's fair that students be disciplined for things they do outside of school, like Facebook posts?
When I was hired by my current employer, my immediate supervisor was a callous rude bully to everybody, and after a straight year of going home pissed off, I lead a coup against him, and once my coworkers saw me rebel they felt safe in doing so themselves and my department ended up psychologically and professionally attacking him. Consultants were called in.
And I'm still here. He's now our gopher. They're too chickenshit to get rid of him because he's in 2 or 3 protected catagories, but he doesn't cause us any trouble. Even my own family told me I was fucking crazy for rebelling against the corporate machine in the way I did.
Somewhat related -- traditionally, during companywide meetings, HR told us that management were allowed to yell and be assholes as long as they didn't touch protected catagories like age, gender, and race. Only a few months ago a new policy was released -- a total reversal of previous policy. The new policy forbids even looking at somebody funny, and no disrespectful speech is allowed, period. I wonder why? Was there too much workplace violence in other units? Too much disability leave as a result of stressed-out workers?
I'm not arguing that the kinder and gentler policy is a bad change, because it's a good change and long overdue -- but since it's so broad it makes me wonder if it's just a justification to get rid of people more easily for being "threatening" or whatever.