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Bullying Interventions

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Children Bullying and Post Traumatic Stress Disorder

What is bullying? Bullying is a habit of maintaining power over someone by repeatedly using aggressive behaviors that are intended to hurt, control, intimidate, or humiliate the target. Bullying is a pattern of behavior that continues or escalates over a period of time. School bullying includes several key components: excessive teasing, to cause fear and suffering, harm to the victim, insulting remarks, name calling, embarrassing jokes, casting someone out of a group, emailing inappropriate sexual comments and revealing intimate information via social media.
Bullying is a prevalent problem in our schools and communities and has a damaging impact on school climate and on student’s right …show more content…

Researchers Merrell et al., 2008, J.D Smith et al., 2004: Vreeman & Carroll, 2007 have reviewed various research studies on school bullying intervention programs. J.D Smith and his colleagues (2004) comprised a research study across several countries and identified no significant program effects on measures of self-reported victimization and bullying. However, the team identified evidence of positive outcomes that coincide with a minimal number of bullying programs. Overall, Smith and his colleagues concluded, whole school bullying programs have resulted in a reduction of bullying in a number of the identified schools however; the results of the 14 identified schools across several countries are too inconsistent to grant the acceptance of these programs exclusively over other whole-school bullying …show more content…

For example, in one study of a fatal sniper attack that occurred at an elementary school proximity to the shooting was directly related to the percentage of children who developed PTSD. Of those children who directly witnessed the shooting on the playground, 77% had moderate to severe PTSD symptoms, whereas 67% of those in the school building at the time and only 26% of the children who had gone home for the day had moderate or severe symptoms. Further studies, show PTSD in children and teenagers requires the presence of re-occurring, avoidance and numbing, and arousal symptoms. However, researchers Pynoos, R. et al. (1987) are beginning to recognize that PTSD may not present itself in children the same way it does in adults. Criteria for PTSD include age-specific features for some symptoms. Reports suggest that elementary school-aged children may not experience visual flashbacks or amnesia for aspects of the trauma. However, they may encounter a state of time skew and omen formation, which are not usually seen in adults. Time skew means a child is mis-sequencing the trauma-related events when remembering the memory. Omen formation is a belief that there were warning signs that predicted the trauma. As a result, children often believe, if they are alert enough, they will recognize warning signs and avoid future traumas. In adolescents, PTSD

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