Originally Posted by AGDee
I've thought a lot about the kinds of kids who get bullied, especially after working in adolescent psych. They are the kids who are "odd" in some way, the kids who don't have self esteem. There were kids who picked on me for some things and some of their comments affected me for years, but I was definitely a kid who didn't have much self esteem. I was able to outwardly stand up for myself and make it stop, but at the same time, it affected me internally. LM didn't have the ability to make it stop. I'm sure it affected her internally, but it wasn't the cause of her mental illness. It was actually more a symptom of her mental illness.
People who commit suicide are mentally ill. Period. They either don't have the coping skills, don't have the support environment, or are too depressed to deal with things in general. Sometimes they can't see other solutions. For some of them, the reasons for mental illness are situational but for others, it is truly a chemical imbalance in the brain that requires meds. Does that make bullying ok? No, absolutely not. We should make every effort to teach our kids to be tolerant of others who might be "odd" and to have empathy toward others rather than to prey on them. But bullies...well, they have their own issues.
Bullies usually bully because they, themselves, feel inferior and they prey on the few who are weaker than they are. I don't believe that people are mean or predatory by nature. I believe they too have a form of mental illness. I worked with the bullied kids who were hospitalized for mental illness but I worked with just as many of the bullies. In the hospital, interestingly, they were all kind of on the same playing field and I believe, sometimes, they did learn about the dynamics and come to understand that none of them felt very good about who they were, but they handled it in opposite ways. I can honestly say that 97% of the kids I worked with, both the bullies and the bullied, were NOT from supportive, loving home environments. The bullies need help, just as the bullied need help. Deep inside, both are hurting a lot.
I don't like the term bullycide at all. It's suicide, no matter how you word it.
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