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Tyler Li

Ms. Sanchez

ERWC, P.3

1 February 2017

How Can Schools Affect Bullying?

Schools around the world experience bullying in many types of ways, which can affect

the students physically or emotionally. Bullying can happen in school or out of school, but they

all affect the victim the same way. Victims will experience various emotional problems from

depression to taking their own life away. At schools, it seems like it could be easy to stop

bullying or there shouldnt be bullying going on, but the staff either do not witness or will let it

slide. Bullying in school can affect the students in a physical and emotional way. Staff members

at school often do not witness bullying incidents happen nor hear about any incidents.

There are many ways for a school to fight against bullying, it can be through an after

school program or with the help from students and teachers. For schools to fight against bullying,

they can encourage students to speak out or to tell an adult to explain and possibly come up with

a solution to bullying situations such as counseling (DeNisco). Counseling for students that go

through bullying or any situation that affects them is a solution that can help students talk their

way through their problems. As students talk about their problems, it will allow them to release

their anger or sadness and will hopefully free their mind of their problems. Due to the many

cases of bullying and the effects, 49 states had made laws to prevent bullying by creating

consequences that could possibly lead the suspect to doing jail time (DeNisco). From the

imbalance of power, the bullies have brought many states to a very extreme solution to decrease

or to hopefully end bullying with the consequences of going to jail. The need for these
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consequences were due to some bullying incidents becoming a crime such as stalking or a victim

committing suicide and having the law enforcement involved with the situation. Schools have

also began to set policies to go over with students about bullying, the policies want schools to set

rules that has a positive outcome, that can cover several situations, and to consistently enforce

these rules (Hellwig). This set of policies can potentially have a positive outcome because of the

staff has to consistently enforce these rules to students, making the rules embedded into the

students mind. In many schools, they need to encourage teachers and staff to report the

incidents that occur (Hellwig). If the staff witness a bullying incident, then the logical decision

is to first stop the bullying and then to report the incident, if teachers did this schools can provide

a way to protect and prevent these circumstances from happening again. Sadly, bullying can

many effects no matter what type of bullying or where bullying takes place.

Bullying can have effects on their victims, themselves, or even bystanders. Bullies that

harass their victims through name calling, teasing, and emotional pain are actually disconnected

and dislike school (Victoria). Students that become bullies go through their own pain before

becoming a ruthless student that picks on students to get rid of their pain and the victims do not

have power to fight back. There have been studies that confirm the sometimes serious

psychological effects of bullying,particularly for the bullied, like increased risk for depression

and anxiety (Walton). The psychological effects from bullying can be terrible, these effects do

not stop there, depression and anxiety can lead to more psychological problems. Victims could

become a bully from the incidents of being bullied, but it can become worse from victims

wanting to commit suicide or sadly victims being a shooter in a school shooting. Bullying can

also affect bystanders because students have thoughts about not attending school or even

experience depression and anxiety even though they were not being bullied (Victoria).
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Bystanders who witness bullying can be indirectly affected from bullying, bystanders are

reluctant to attend school because they are afraid that they will be a victim of bullying. Although,

bystanders can develop depression and anxiety, they might not be as likely to inflict personal

pain or pain to others unlike the victims that are being bullied and that have developed

depression and anxiety. Studies had also shown that kids who had been victims only (who never

bullied others) had greater risks for depressive disorders, anxiety disorders, generalized anxiety,

panic disorder, and agoraphobia as adults (Walton). Studies said that adults will develop

agoraphobia which is symptoms of anxiety and people will also perceive certain environments as

unsafe and that has no way out. Bullying is a problem and frequently happens to many people

and knowing the effects from bullying, it is scary to think how many victims experience these

effect and how the victims get through these times.

In the last paragraph, it mentioned the emotional effects from bullying, but bullying can

also cause physical pain. Bullying can make victims roughly twice as likely as their non-bullied

counterparts to experience psychosomatic symptoms (Pearson). Psychosomatic symptoms is

physical or bodily pain that can be a result from mental and emotional disturbances. According to

the definition of psychosomatic, emotional effects of bullying(depression, anxiety) can lead to

even more effects that are physical(headaches, stomachaches). Bullying can place you in mental

and physical stress, the fight-flight response can cause this stress because an individual will have

a stress hormone released which will raise blood pressure and pulse (Morris). Stress from the

fight-flight response is caused from bullying and then can lead to the victim experiencing

physical pain. Most physical pain (headaches) would be ignored or would not be taken as a

serious problem, but in some cases it is a problem because of bullying. According to 30 studies

with 219,000 children and adolescents, the children that are bullied experience headaches,
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stomachaches, and sleep problems (Pearson). If victims of bullying are experiencing these

symptoms, this could affect their life by not being able to go to school due to a headache or a

stomachache and without the proper amount of sleep, individuals can catch a sickness much

easier. Since bullying can cause stress, an increased production of cortisol in response to stress

increases fat storage and appetite (Morris). If an individual was to have an increase in weight

this could be because of bullying causing the stress levels to rise leading to an increase in cortisol

which could increase an individuals weight. Also, an increase in weight can also lead to more

bullying to happen to an individual due to body shaming and the problem is only getting worse if

this bullying does not stop.

Bullying can of course lead to sad and terrible problems going from emotional to physical

effects. This is not an easy situation to stop from happening very frequently, but the only way to

stop bullying is for everyone to lend a hand and this goes for the victims, which should tell a

teacher about the incident to resolve the situation and for the teachers to report any incidents, so

their school and students can have a safe experience at their school.
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Work Cited

Https://www.facebook.com/AmericanSPCC. "Physical Effects of Bullying." American SPCC. N.p., 15

July 2014. Web. 05 Feb. 2017.

Pearson, Catherine. "Bullying Has Clear Physical Effects, Review Says." The Huffington Post.

TheHuffingtonPost.com, n.d. Web. 05 Feb. 2017.

Institute, Crisis Prevention. "10 Ways to Help Reduce Bullying in Schools." Crisis Prevention

Institute (CPI). Crisis Prevention Institute, 25 Oct. 2016. Web. 05 Feb. 2017.

"Are Schools Doing Enough to Stop Bullying?" District Administration Magazine. N.p., n.d. Web. 05

Feb. 2017.

Walton, Alice G. "The Psychological Effects Of Bullying Last Well Into Adulthood, Study Finds."

Forbes. Forbes Magazine, 21 Feb. 2013. Web. 05 Feb. 2017.

"The Impact of Bullying." The Impact of Bullying. N.p., n.d. Web. 05 Feb. 2017.