Bullying: A Public Health Crisis

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Recommended: Growing problem of bullying

On any given school day, 30% of American teenagers are classified as perpetrators, sufferers, or bystanders of bullying, and 3.2 million kids are on the receiving end of bullying each year (Greenya). Some kids today wake up early during the school week anticipating another day of school. To them, it’s like a home away from home that provides a safe environment to learn, interact with peers, grow up, develop a sense of self, and make impressions of how they want to be perceived in the world. Of course, there are also occasional moments of complete anxiety: a week of final exams, a nerve-wracking class presentation, or doing well in a composition class. However, for the other kids, anxiety is an everyday problem. For them, the weekend can’t arrive fast enough, and normal weekday mornings are instead filled with feelings of nausea, gloom, and dread. Some may even have thoughts of ending their life. Every day, hundreds of thousands of people’s lives are affected by this brutal form of abuse. In fact, there is an estimated “160,000 children who skip school every day to avoid bullying” (Greenya). What was once regarded as the typical raucous behaviors of childhood, bullying today is a national school occurrence that has grabbed the attention of parents, teachers, administrators, police, and even state and federal legislators. Bullying has become a serious and widespread problem.

The crisis of bullying has grown dramatically in the past years. Bullying surrounds everyone, from daily harassing insults that are thrown around in the hallways, to bruising from shoves or punches, and even to lethal bullets. Never before have there been large amounts of horrendous cases of bullying with fatal results – the growing prevalence i...

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... 2011.

Billitteri, Thomas. “Cyberbullying.” CQResearcher. CQPress, 2 May 2008. Web. 24 Oct. 2011.

Billitteri, Thomas. “Preventing Bullying.” CQResearcher. CQPress, 10 Dec. 2010. Web. 24 Oct. 2011.

Greenya, John. “Bullying.” CQResearcher. CQPress, 4 Feb. 2005. Web. 24 Oct. 2011.

Li, Qing. "Student Experience with Bullying and Cyberbullying." Global Issues in Context Online Collection. Detroit: Gale. Global Issues In Context. Web. 24 Oct. 2011.

Srabstein, Jorge C., and Bennett L. Leventhal. "Prevention of bullying-related morbidity and mortality: a call for public health policies." Bulletin of the World Health Organization. June 2010: 403. Global Issues In Context. Web. 24 Oct. 2011.

Stop Bullying. Special Topics. The Department of Health and Human Services in partnership with the Department of Education and Department of Justice, Web. 24 Oct. 2011.

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