Bullying occurs in all walks of life be it at home, in school or even in the work place. Research clearly shows that 1 in every four people is being bullied. Bullying is and has been a major source of pain to most people causing hurt feelings and trauma. It leads to emotional pain and scar that heal slowly or never heal at all. This is the reason I chose this topic; the purpose of this study is to continue to sensitize rational individuals about the pain and suffering that the victims of bullying are forced to live with. A bully can be anyone of equal, lesser or greater authority than you. Smith (2000) stipulates that males are rarely bullied by females but females on the other hand are bullied by both males and females.
Problem statement
Does bullying have long lasting emotional harm on the victim? Bullying has lots of negative effects on the victim including emotional damages that can lead to hopelessness and depression.
Background information
Bullying can be defined as an act treating someone in an overbearing and intimidating manner or to forcing ones way in an aggressive and demeaning way. Bullying may be caused by some reasons which even the bullies themselves may not comprehend or if they do they are in constant denial. This may be caused by low self esteem, low confidence, anger, bitterness, hatred, envy, jealousy, insecurity and inadequacy. On the other hand victims of acts of bullying undergo a lot of suffering both physical being beaten and emotionally. This includes poor self esteem, depression, apathy, low morality and damaged personal relationships, drug abuse, dropping from school or committing suicide. It is true that apart from bullying causing long and lasting damages to the victims, it also has negative effects on the perpetrators and those who witness the act.
Thesis statement
Bullying causes long term emotional damage which has undesirable effects to the victims.
Literature review
According to Mark Dombeck, bullying causes numerous and lasting harm to the victims. This has been proven through both research and through the victims’ word. It is important to understand that harm doesn’t necessarily be from being physically assaulted or such. This can result from unfriendly words meant to cause harm. It goes without saying that wounds inflicted from physical assault like fighting can heal with time but the kind of wound an hurt inflicted by bullying takes very long to heal (Dombeck 34). In fact it causes hurt and destruction to the victim’s identity. Bullying aims at lodging fear and hate and the targets of such end up thinking they are less effective and incapable.
Perceiving oneself as less desirable and incapable has its own negative implications. One can end being prone to depression, anger and bitterness. The victims of bully end up with the idea that they aren’t liked and are at danger especially so if the perpetrator is someone or some superior forces that dominate them. This renders them powerless and defenseless. This realization that you can do nothing about what is happening leads to a situation of learned helplessness where you end up believing you can surely do nothing about it. This causes the victims of bullying to be hopeless and depressed (Dombeck 103). On the other hand your perception on how others see you also changes for the worse. You start taking yourself as a weak, pathetic and hopeless loser. This is to say your identity is crashed and you even start to accept what the bullies say about you.
A person’s identity is directly influenced by their surrounding and the people around them. Therefore for young people who haven’t faced life’s challenges, comprehension of who they are or what they are made of is a huge challenge. For most of the young people, identity is what people around them think of them or how they see them. This is the idea of people being in groups and doing things together. Bullying makes people think they don’t fit to a group and that they are outcasts. Sadly the victims of bullying succumb to the idea of being outsiders especially after being beaten or humiliated in public (Dombeck 113). As a normal being victims of bullying with time start to gauge themselves by the bullies’ standard and think they are weak, worthless, pathetic, and of less value. This leads to depression and when combined with vengeful thoughts, it causes anger and rage.
According to me, having a shattered identity causes one to stop believing in oneself. This reduces a person’s reactions especially to hard times or challenging situations. It leads to poor academic performance and in worse cases it may lead to the victim dropping from school to avoid being bullied. If such continues then the future of such a person will be in chaos from further education to employment.
Research plan
A lot of viable research and surveys has been carried out on bullying and its negative effects it has on both the perpetrator and the victim. There is no apparent fixed means of collecting statistics or categorizing bullies. From just a miniature sample it is reported that more than 4% of individuals especially pupils are fall for bullies two to three times a month. I intend to carry out a thorough research and collect sufficient information on bullying and the effects it has on both parties to bullying. I will employ the use of interviews as my first method to collect information. This will be done systematically and in a descending manner starting at institution level down to the victims. This means that I will start by interviewing the authorities at institutions like colleges and high school. I will liaise with the guidance and counseling department of such institutions to get the information. This department will then help me to identify a student who has been a victim of bullying to interview and collect his/her experiences.
My second method will be to collect information using questionnaires. I will make exhaustive questionnaires which I will use to collect information on bullying from learning institutions. This will be particularly meant to be filled by students about their experiences of bullying both in school and at home. In addition I will employ questionnaires on people who are in the job market in order to collect information about any form of bullying at their work places. In my opinion I believe use of questionnaires to collect information from the working group of individuals is appropriate in order to avoid any confrontations and clashing with the authorities. I intend to issue the questionnaires at their home and not at their job places. Last but not least I intend to carry out intense research on material that is already available on the internet sources, books and scholarly journals. This will be restricted to trusted sources and well known research institutions and authors in order to avoid any misleading information. I believe that this research plan will yield correct and tangible facts on the effects of bullying on a person’s emotion.
Reference
Dombeck M. The Long Term Effects of Bullying. Michigan: sage publishing company, 2009. Retrieved: www.info.epmhmr.org
