The Quite Victims of Bullying

On this blog I will wrap up my description and analysis on victims of bullying as discussed within the journal article “Bullying in School: An Overview of Types, Effects, Family Characteristics, and Intervention Strategies”, by Paul R. Smokowski and Kelly Holland Kopasz.

According to the journal article victims are often more quite, cautious, anxious, insecure, and sensitive than their peers. In addition, they usually have poor communication skills and problem-solving skills. The poor communication skills exhibited by victims often deter them from conversing with their peers, which consequently results in fewer friends. In fact, Smokowski and Kopasz report that a study found that “victims of bullying demonstrated poorer social and emotional adjustment, greater difficulty making friends, few relationships with peers, and greater loneliness.” Another study found that many victims relate much better to adults, than their own peers. This last finding may prove to be extremely critical towards understanding victims of bullying. It seems that victims of bullying are in a way reaching towards help. However their lack of social and communicative skills seems to be the factor that prevents victims from expressing their needs. As a result, anti-bullying strategies should aim to improve the communication that exists between bullies and the corresponding authoritative figure. However it should be noted that the improvement of communicative skills should be focused on all age groups, not only children.

Smokowski and Kopasz point out that the lack of communication skills often hinders victims from reporting their bullying incidents. This is particularly concerning because when victims neglect to report bullying incidents, it may encourage and cause bullies to continue to target these individuals as victims. As I have stated before, bullies seem to have a false sense of invisibility. On this occasion bullies see their victims as easy target. The journal article also highlights that victims of bullying often suffer from poor self-esteem and see themselves as failures, unattractive, unintelligent, and insignificant. This ends up creating for victims an erroneous sense of self-blame. As result, anti-bullying strategies should not only focus on the remediation of bullies and correcting their behaviors. Anti-bullying strategies should also pay attention towards the remediation of the victims of bullying, since they may suffer deep and invisible mental wounds.