When hearing the word ‘bullying’ many people will give a negative connotation to it. There has been found many different ways someone can get bullied, in which the victim usually become fearful to speaks up about it. Countless people have been affected by others not knowing why they are being laughed at and or attacked. Pursuant to the APA (American Psychological Association) bullying is defined as ‘a form of aggressive behavior in which someone intentionally and repeatedly causes another person injury or discomfort.’ Also, the APA has estimated that around 1600 children fear getting bullied so they tend to miss school. In most cases, any physical contact, words, or subtle actions can be considered a form of bullying. Bullying can take place anywhere and to someone of any age, being young or old. There are many negative effects that come with these actions toward someone, starting with having depression to even attempting or committing suicide. In general, bullying can be used on certain people, affect them in their everyday life, or even make people take extreme measure to make it stop.
As mentioned bullying can happen to anyone of any age and helps affect the lives of people, whether it would be at work or at school. Looking at someone’s work life or school life people are able to see a big change when someone gets bullied. For example, when looking at a student getting bullied not only will bullying affect them emotionally or even physically, it will affect their academic performance. In the academic journal, ‘The Effects of Bullying on Academic Achievement’ states, ‘… bullying has had negative consequences on students’ education and on their quality of life; for instance, Unicef (2007a) reports that bullying decreases school attendance rates, contact with peers, and academic achievement while it increases physical injuries and the incidence of depression.
Furthermore the journal continued to show a diagram displaying how students in high school from Colombia do on a standardized test for freshmen, while looking at the level of bullying they go through. Looking at this diagram is shows that students with a high level of bullying had poorer scores on the exams than those students who had medium to a low level of bullying. This showing how bullying can affect someone’s life and how they live and do with it. This case being students that academically do poorer when they are being more bullied than others.
Nonetheless, bullying can also occur in a working environment full of adults, affecting the victims quality if work and and relationships with surrounding colleagues. The journal, ‘Teacher Under Attack’ it cites, ‘A quick web search revealed that educators report being bullied at higher rates that professionals in almost any other field. (Nursing is also at the top).’ The journal later on describes how the teachers supervisors start with targeting the teacher to ridicule in meetings, belittle them in front their students or student’s parents, and sending accusatory and confrontational email to the targeted teacher.
All of these actions not only will affect the relationships between a teacher and his or her surrounding colleagues but with students and parents, as well. It also mentions a former superintendent and author of he book Exploiting Children: School Boarding Members Who Cross the Line, Matt Spencer, explains how by someone getting bullied can get affected with anxiety attacks, loss of sleep, loss of appetite, throwing up before work, and the inability to work. This demonstrates how bullying can terribly affect anyone one, in this case, a teacher or any other profesional by not being able to got to work and be at work comfortably or do it correctly with quality.
Ultimately, bullying has always had a negative effect on anyone experiencing it, but the effect it has can go from getting anxiety or depression to committing suicide to stop the pain people have gone through.
