Bullying Linked to Suicide

             Recently I posted a blog regarding a young teenage girl who committed suicide.  Although it has not been confirmed that bullying was the main cause of the young girl’s suicide, the girl’s parents feel that bullying played a major factor in the girl’s death.  On this occasion I will discuss an article regarding bullying and its link to suicide among teenagers. The article I will be discussing is titled “Teens taunted by bullies are more likely to consider, attempt suicide” and can be found on the “latimes.com”.

 According to the article, researchers in a study conducted by JAMA Pediatrics quantified the “emotional effects of being teased, harassed, beaten up or otherwise harmed by one’s peers” by citing 34 reliable studies regarding the relationship between peer victimization and suicidal ideation (with total of 284,375 participants) and 9 studies regarding the relationship between peer victimization and suicide attempts (with a total of 70,102 participants). The aforementioned studies were found within medical literature published in English, Spanish, German, French, Dutch, Portuguese, and Lithuanian since 1910, and all participants were aged from 9 to 21. In the end, an analysis of the aforementioned studies revealed that victims of bullying “were 2.23 times [more] likely to think about killing themselves than kids who had not been victimized.” In addition, it was revealed that “kids and teens who were bullied were 2.55 times [more] likely to attempt suicide than their counterparts who had not been victimized.”

One of the great features of the JAMA Pediatrics study is that it does not rely on only one study to conduct its conclusions, but rather uses a collection of studies to formulate its conclusions. In my opinion the aforementioned statistics highlight how devastating bullying can be to the self-esteem of victims. It is disturbing to realize the effects bullying can cause on children. Although all children do not respond to bullying in the same manner, the fact that suicide attempts have been linked to bullying should highlight the importance of this topic.

            The article also notes that previous studies “reported that cyber bullying could be just as bad as traditional bullying. However, this study found that victims of cyber bullying are especially vulnerable because “being bullied in person increased one’s risk for suicidal ideation by a factor of 2.16, while being bullied via e-mail, via text messages or in videos posted on the Internet increased the risk by a factor of 3.12.” A possible explanation offered by Mitch van Geel, the study leader, was that cyber bullying “victims may feel they’ve been denigrated in front of a wider audience” and that the “material can be stored online, which [… can] cause victims to relive the denigrating experience more often.”

The aforementioned claim and statistic provided by the article does not paint a promising feature for the future. As previously discussed, technology has led to the creation of cyber-bullying, a trend that has become increasingly prevalent within society and a trend that should continue to increase with the passage of time. As a result one can only expect suicide attempts to continue to increase. Researchers need to place emphasis on cyber bullying before it gets out of hand.