The immediate and longterm effects of bullying

Most educators and healthcare professionals are aware of the serious consequences that school bullying can have for the victims of bullying. What is less well understood is the complexity of bullying behaviour as a social phenomenon embedded in the peer group as a whole in a particular cultural context (Jones et al., 2011). According to Salmivalli et al., (1996), bullying involves more than perpetrators and targets since it is experienced within a group, where those involved, whether as active agents, targets or as bystanders, take on a range of participant roles. The bullies are usually supported by assistants and are reinforced by others who encourage the aggressive behaviour by, for example, jeering at the victim or keeping a lookout for adults. Bullying is further supported by the bystanders who observe what is happening but who frequently take no action to prevent it. Only a minority of students will act as defenders of the victim and this proportion decreases as children become adolescents (Rigby & Slee, 1991). As a result, bullying is likely to have an impact on individuals, on their classroom group and on the school as a whole. This chapter examines key ways in which children and young people who are directly or indirectly involved in school bullying are affected. It considers the immediate and long-term effects that bullying behaviour can have on individual children as well as on the emotional climate of the whole school