Suicide, Bullies, and
Depression
Making a Difference
by Samantha (age 14) - Gravitate Middle School
- Michigan
Jared High was an extremely nice kid. He had lots of friends
and a good heart. But, he was bullied. He was very depressed from being
targeted by the school bully, and one day decided he couldn't take it anymore,
so he shot himself and was killed instantly.
There is a name for kids and teens who commit suicide
because of being bullied, like Jared: It's called Bullycide. Did you know
that 1out of 4 kids is bullied? Or that 282,000 students are physically
attacked in secondary schools each month? That's outrageous. Nobody
deserves to be bullied, and most people know this, but did they ever
actually stop and defend someone being bullied for a ridiculous reason,
like not dressing the "right way" or not being good at sports, or being
the intelligent student of the school? Not likely. That happens to everyone;
they see someone getting picked on and don't try to stop it.
The schools aren't doing much to help either. Over 6 million
boys and 4 million girls are involved in physical fights every year on
school grounds, and I guess that's not too hard to believe, because every
7 minutes, on some part of school grounds, a child or teenager is bullied,
and the chances of adult intervention is only 4% and student intervention
is 11%, while the chances of no intervention is 85%.
The point here is that bullying does kill people, and
nobody seems to realize that. Sisters Samantha and Michaela Kendal were
both so taunted about being overweight that they went on a hunger strike,
and they both died. Twelve year old Stephen Woodhall hanged himself with
his brother's tie, because he'd rather kill himself than face another day
of being pushed around and taunted by bullies. Not too long ago, actually
only in September of 1997 in England, 13 year old Kelly Yeomans took a
fatal overdose of drugs after months and months of being tormented. Her
bullies were given the terrible punishment... of being slapped on the wrist.
No, bullying doesn't always lead to suicide, but a lot
of it leads to fighting, and fighting can also kill people, like twelve
year old Debbie Shaw's fight, when she agreed to a challenge from anonymous
girls to end her victimization by fighting the school bully. Debbie died
of her injuries.
1 out of 3 students has heard, more than once, another
student threaten to kill someone. I know I've heard that before, and
now I also know that people do take that threat and make it reality, so
I try my best to stick up for anyone I see being bullied. It doesn't seem
like much, but you may mean the world to someone who may have been at home
testing knives in their kitchen to see if they were sharp enough to kill
them, or if they were planning to load a gun as soon as they got home and
bring it to school the next day for self defense, or if they're just someone
who thought nobody would ever say something and they'd never have a real
friend.
Bullying also interrupts people's lives in ways that I
can't believe; it makes them miss a lot of school, or miss out on going
anywhere at all because they're so afraid of bullies. People say it will
get better after grade school, because bullies supposedly get over their
obsession to hurt people for stupid reasons. Well if that is true, then
please tell me how,
according to a poll, teens ages 12-17 believe violence
and bullying has increased in their schools since elementary school.
Why do bullies constantly put people down and abuse them
in such a way?
I didn't know until I found a study on www.family-first.com
showed the top 5 reasons as to why a bully might become a bully:
1) They might just be angry and in need of someone
to take their frustration out on.
2) Someone might have bullied them in the past.
3) They have low self esteem, and think controlling someone
might make them feel better about themselves.
4) I hate to say this one, because I watch violence on
T.V., and listen to violent music, but maybe the bully was exposed to too
much of it and thought they would be cool if they hurt someone just like
the good guy in the movie or the rapper in the song.
5) Maybe their parents spoiled them to death, making
them think they can get away with anything, including bullying.
Speaking of parents, where exactly are they in a situation
like bullying? They have a huge influence on their kids, and although
we as kids resent them once in awhile, we know deep down they want to help
us.
I'm lucky enough to have parents that I can talk to, and
they've always reminded me to show compassion towards others with a quote:
"Be
more kind than necessary." When I was little, I never understood it,
but now that I'm a teenager and see people being picked on every day, I
try my best to act upon that quote. I know I've bullied someone in the
past, and so has everyone else in this room, maybe not physically, but
I know we definitely must have hurt their feelings. I'm not trying to make
anyone feel bad, because 1 out of 5 kids say they've bullied someone
in the past as well. I know now that nobody I've hurt deserved that,
and maybe I can't make that up to them, but I can jump in and stick up
for someone who's being bullied by someone else.
Everybody should be respected, and everyone is equal.
I'm tired of walking into school day after day and seeing someone being
bullied. It just isn't right, and although I haven't changed the world
and eliminated bullying entirely, maybe I had some effect on people with
this speech. As I close, I want those who believe they can't do anything
about bullying to remember this: A lot of people think that there's no
hope for bullied kids, or maybe that we're just growing up, but making
a difference is about believing when you have nothing to believe in, so
make that difference.
Violent Deaths In or Near Schools
Are Rare
But Communities and Schools
Must Heed Threats
FOR RELEASE: December 4, 2001
Contact: Melinda Kitchell Malico (202) 401-1576
A new report from the Centers for Disease Control (CDC)
and Prevention, and the U.S. Departments of Education (ED) and Justice
shows that while homicides and suicides in or around elementary and secondary
schools are rare, such incidents may be preventable if schools and communities
acquaint themselves with student behavior that can precede violent events
- and take the proper and recommended steps to head off violent incidents.
"These findings verify that our schools are very safe
and that few people become homicide victims in or near schools," said U.S.
Secretary of Education Rod Paige. "But violence can occur in any school
and at any grade level, which is why our schools and communities must develop
school-safety and emergency plans that cover crime prevention and response."
"Our schools can do many things to keep our children
and their teachers safe, including watching for signals that precede violent
outbursts, paying close attention to threats, and learning to recognize
and respond to bullying behavior."
The study reveals that more than half of all violent incidents
recorded in the study occurred after some type of potential signal came
from a young person such as a threat, note or journal entry. And
students who committed violence were nearly seven times more likely than
victims to have expressed suicidal thoughts or plans or actually attempted
suicide.
The study also confirms a link between bullying victimization
and aggressive behavior, with those bullied by their peers found to be
at especially high risk for committing violence. Most violent events
occurred during times of transition in schools, during morning arrival
times, lunch, or at the end of the school day.
According to the study, the rate of school-associated
events that resulted in violent deaths decreased significantly since 1992-93,
the first year of the initial study. During the same period, the rate of
events in which more than one victim was killed increased significantly.
The new report was conceived jointly by the agencies in
order to gather and analyze information about the characteristics and incidences
of school-associated violent deaths, data that are not routinely reported
to state or federal agencies. The CDC and ED produced the first such systematic
review of the data in a 1996 report that looked at school years 1992-93
and 1993-94. This study extends and expands on the previous study, examining
the school years 1994-95 through 1998-99.
Bill Modzeleski, director of the U.S. Department of Education's
Safe and Drug Free Schools Program, co-authored the report.
Cases were identified using two strategies: a systematic
search of newspaper and broadcast media databases and the review of a newspaper
clipping service and voluntary reports from state and local education agencies.
The two-pronged review identified events that were subsequently confirmed
as reliable via telephone interviews with law enforcement (in 97 percent
of the cases) or schools (78 percent), or excluded during confirmation
interviews.
Among the other findings:
253 victims died in 220 school-associated violent death
events between 1994-99; among the victims, 68 percent were students, 7.1
percent were faculty or staff, 4.7 percent were family members of students
and 11.9 percent were local residents; among the 279 perpetrators, 36.9
percent were students, 25.8 percent were local residents and 17.9 percent
were not directly associated with the school or local community; perpetrators
were more likely than victims to have a history of criminal charges, be
in a gang, associate with high-risk peers, be considered loners, or use
alcohol or drugs; the death rate for male students was more than double
that of females; and the death rate for non-Hispanic black students was
more than triple that of whites.
The report has been published in the Journal of the American
Medical Association and is available by calling the contact listed above
or online at: http://www.jama.ama-assn.org/issues/v286n21/abs/joc11149.html.
Additional resources are available from the U.S. Department
of Education at http://www.ed.gov/offices/OESE/SDFS/
or CDC at http://www.cdc.gov/ncipc.
