Bullying

One of the ideas that the Youth Project has had to write on this blog was to discuss topics that affects young people. Such as bullying....

Bullying is a form of abuse that takes place in all areas of life. There are three stages to bullying: emotional, verbal and then physical. Bullying normally starts off with teasing or mocking someone repeatedly until it is simply unbearable for the victim.

Victims of bullying tend to feel quite isolated and in need of help. Personally, I have gone through this familiar route. I used to get bullied for a few years and it got worse when I moved to this country. I would get verbal abuse from the older kids at school and it got to the point where I was being slapped. All this for something that wasn’t my fault even though I felt that at the time it was. I didn’t tell my parents for ages but my friends persuaded me to do so.

Bullying made me feel scared of going outside, made me feel useless and still now I have difficulty going to new places and meeting new people in case they say something. Bullying can lower your self-esteem and make you feel small.

Unfortunately, bullying doesn’t stop there. There are a whole lot of aftershocks to it taking for example stress, depression and even suicide. Britain has the worst suicide rates in Europe each year 5000* people die and a significant amount of this number is down to bullying. Who would have thought that teasing someone could force a victim to death?

Over the years the government seemed to have done very little about combating bullying however the current government are setting new plans to give head teachers more power in dealing with different branches of bullying for instance homophobic bullying.

If you are a victim of bullying then tell someone you trust AS SOON AS POSSIBLE! Don’t suffer in silence! You will feel much better once you’ve got it off your chest. Also there are activities to take part in to boost your confidence such as our youth forums, where in the last forum a theatre group came and showed us some games that we could play. This really helped to lift our self-esteem and put aside any troubles we were going through. Finally there are websites you can go on or organisations you can call for advice.

Semra

Childline:
childline.or.uk
0800 1111
Bullying UK
Bullying.co.uk
Beat Bullying
Beatbullying.org
*statistic obtained from bullyingonline.org