Children with observable disabilities are the highest victims of bullying and also more likely to bully others at school, according to a team of researchers who examined and provided a solution to the problem of bullying in school.
Lead author Susan Swearer and her team examined the cause and effect of the problem and found majority of the students affected with observable disabilities like language and hearing impairments or mild mental handicaps becoming victims of bullying at school and more often, bully others as a kind of revenge.
Investigators included and followed about 800 students, aged 9 to 16. At the end of the study, researchers found students who received special education services at a higher risk of being bullied and face disciplinary actions after bullying others and engage in antisocial behavior.
"These results paint a fairly bleak picture for students with disabilities in terms of bullying, victimization and disciplinary actions," lead author Swearer, said in a statement. "Sadly, these are the students who most need to display pro-social behavior and receive support from their peers."
Around 67 percent of the children were found to be victims of bullying and more than a third (38.1 percent) confessed to bullying others. Students with non-visible disabilities like learning disabilities experienced less bullying compared to students with behavior disabilities.
"The observable nature of the disability makes it easy to identify those students as individuals with disabilities, which may place them at greater risk for being the easy target of bullying," Swearer and her co-authors wrote. "Also, being frustrated with the experience of victimization, those students might engage in bullying behavior as a form of revenge."
Gender differences found to be less insignificant, as both boys and girls reported engaging in bullying. Investigators, after getting the result, expected to put a permanent end to the problem haunting majority of school children.
"Programming should be consistently implemented across general and special education, should occur in each grade and should be part of an inclusive curriculum. A culture of respect, tolerance and acceptance is our only hope for reducing bullying among all school-aged youth," the authors concluded.
According to the American Psychological Association, about 70 percent of middle and high school students are the victims of bullying. About 160,000 children miss school each day, fearing of being bullied at school. Children who are bullied are more likely to suffer from depression, low esteem, headaches, stomach aches, poor appetite, nervousness and fatigue and sometimes leading to attempt of suicide,bullyingpreventioninstitute.com reported.
In the month of May, a seven-year-old Detroit boy, allegedly upset with his parents' break-up and bullying at school, hanged himself from his bunk bed with a belt, at his residence.
