Bullying is a pervasive problem in the United States, causing an outsized impact on the mental health and well-being of children and adolescents throughout the country. In October, Elite DNA and countless other organizations recognize Bullying Awareness Month, as part of a widespread approach to bring awareness to the impacts bullying causes and to help schools implement bullying prevention strategies that can support their students for the rest of the year.
Bullying is unfortunately all too common, but prevention efforts have been shown to be effective in helping the mental health of both the kids who are bullied and those who engage in bullying. Implementing these strategies can help address bullying problems in your schools or communities and support children in having safe spaces to learn, grow, and thrive.
Find an Elite DNA location near you to get in touch with mental health experts who can help your child cope with bullying and work with you to help prevent bullying.
Bullying in the United States
According to the National Center for Education Statistics, roughly one in five students between the ages of 12-18 reported being bullied during school between 2021-2022. The data suggests that bullying happens most often between 6th and 8th grade – where more than one in four students reported bullying each year – and tends to decline toward high school.
Certain student groups are at higher risk of being bullied than others. For instance:
- Students of mixed race report the highest rate of being bullied at 30.1%
- Bullying is more likely to occur in rural or small-town schools
- Public school students are at higher risk of being bullied than private school students
These numbers are significantly lower than the same statistics just 10 years ago, showing that recent efforts to prevent bullying have been successful in reducing bullying, yet there is still much work to do.
Different Types of Bullying Behavior
Bullying behavior today happens in several different environments and contexts. Bullying can happen online, over text messages, in person, or through peers, and bullying prevention efforts need to respond to each in turn to reduce bullying behavior.
Some of the more common forms of bullying today include:
- Cyberbullying: Cyberbullying happens online, typically through social media, messaging platforms, or cell phones
- Aggressive Behavior: This could include physical harm, making threats, or attacking somebody verbally
- Spreading Rumors: Spreading rumors to peers or other students can lead to peer conflict, social ostracization, or other harmful effects
- Discrimination: Discriminating against people because of their race, religion, appearance, gender, or culture is considered bullying behavior
A comprehensive bullying prevention plan needs to account for each of these types of bullying and provide actionable tools to community members to help stop bullying at the source.
Bullying Prevention Strategies
As pervasive and harmful as bullying is, there are several strategies that a school community can use to prevent bullying from taking place. Some of the most effective options for preventing bullying include:
Bullying Awareness Education
Making students, parents, teachers, and community members more educated about the scope and impact of bullying is often the first critical step in implementing a comprehensive bullying prevention plan. People may often believe that bullying doesn’t happen in their school, their community, or their town – or that the harms of bullying are overblown.
Showing parents, educators, and students the real-life consequences of bullying in a school setting can help people feel engaged about solving the problem, more likely to support anti-bullying efforts, and more committed to taking action against bullying in the months and years to come.
Consider hosting a school assembly or meeting focused on the harms of bullying and what your community can do to start making improvements. Contact experts such as school psychologists, who may be able to explain the signs of bullying to look out for, teach social-emotional learning skills to students, or get students involved in community prevention efforts.
Start making bullying a key community issue, rather than something that’s pushed to the side or ignored, and you’ll start seeing meaningful action taken to help reduce bullying behavior.
Empowering Bystanders
The vast majority of bullying incidents go unreported, even though there are several people who witnessed the event. Helping children and bystanders feel empowered to speak up, report incidents after they happen, and stand up for what they believe in can go a long way toward reducing bullying behaviors in the future.
Part of this process is educating children about bullying: what it looks like, how it affects people, and who to notify if they see somebody get bullied or are bullied themselves. Another component is showing children the value of standing up for others and creating safe places for them to do so.
Students don’t want to live in environments where bullying is common but often feel powerless to prevent it. When you show them that the power is in their hands and that their actions can make a difference, they can create the school environment that they want to live in.
Encourage a Positive School Climate
A positive climate in the school can be a powerful tool for bullying prevention. A school culture that values kindness, respect, and inclusion is the foundation of bullying prevention and can show children that bullying isn’t unacceptable.
Creating this climate often takes time, dedication, and buy-in from educators and parents alike. But a few key things you can implement today that will help to cultivate this climate include:
- Creating zero-tolerance anti-bullying policies
- Setting clear expectations for student behavior, both inside and outside of the classroom
- Clear, defined consequences for bullying behavior
When bullying is addressed by school administrators swiftly and directly, it sends a clear message to children that bullying behavior is not tolerated and will be met with consequences. This, in turn, can help teach children different ways of dealing with their emotions or challenges, supporting them in building more adaptive coping skills to last for the rest of their lives.
Get Parents and Caretakers Involved
Parents and caretakers play a large role in the prevention of bullying. Teaching children about the harms of bullying and how to prevent it isn’t just the job of educators and school administrators but is the responsibility of the entire community.
There are several different ways that parents and caregivers can contribute to anti-bullying efforts. This could include:
- Talking with their children about the harms of bullying
- Encouraging children to speak up when they see bullying
- Teaching their kids better ways of managing their emotions than lashing out at others
- Volunteering to support community bullying prevention efforts
The messaging on bullying needs to be consistent across a child’s school, home, and extracurricular life. When everyone buys into bullying prevention efforts, it can create environments where the idea of bullying others becomes intolerable.
Providing Treatment for Children who Engage in Bullying
Children who bully others are often facing serious personal challenges that they don’t know how to handle on their own. They may be dealing with personal anxieties, feelings of insecurity, or emotional health problems that make them feel like they’re out of control of their own behavior.
While this doesn’t excuse their behavior aimed at others, these children need support, too. Working with a child therapist can help these children understand why they feel angry or feel the need to harm others and provide them with healthier coping mechanisms to deal with their frustrations.
Prevention efforts are designed to avoid children needing to start counseling for bullying, but after bullying has occurred, these professionals can help children get back on track and avoid hurting others in the future.
Contact Elite DNA for Mental Health Treatment for Your Child
If your child is struggling with anger, aggression, or other types of bullying behaviors, or your child has been the target of bullying and needs help to cope, the child and adolescent treatment professionals at Elite DNA are here to help. Our team works diligently to connect children, parents, and bullying experts together to create long-term recovery plans that will support your child, whether they need help processing trauma caused by bullying or with putting their aggressive behaviors aside and thriving in a school setting.
Visit our website to find an Elite DNA location near you, and start therapy for bullying for your child today.
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