欺负行为在学生中的盛行以及由此引发的常见症状.docxVIP

附录三Bullying Among School Children:Prevalence and Association with Common Symptoms in Childhood ObjectiveTo estimate the prevalence of bullying among girls and boys in school and examine its association with psychological and psychosomatic symptoms.Bullying is defined as the intentional and unprovoked abuse of power by one or more children to inflict pain or cause distress to another child on repeated occasions. Being a common and neglected form of child abuse, it not only has adverse effects on the victims’ academic performance but also on their physical and psychological health, the various forms of bullying being calling names,physical abuse, teasing, spreading rumors, provoking, social exclusion and threatening. Minimal studies have been conducted on this field in India. Bullying is highly prevalent in India but no steps have been taken to combat this potentially hazardous social evil. Hence, this study was undertaken to assess the prevalence of bullying in schools and its association with common childhood symptoms and to throw light upon the seriousness of the problem.This study has shown that bullying is highly prevalent in schools in this part of the country and the prevalence of bullying noted in the present study(60.4%)could be one of the highest amongst studies carried out worldwide. This estimate is higher than that reported by Kshirsagar et al. who found the bullying in Maharashtra to be 31.4%.Similarly,in a study done in Newham,London,the rate was found to be only 22.4%.Glen M Glew et al. in his study found the prevalence to be 19.1%. Also,the prevalence among boys(63.9%)was more than among girls(53%),more so in exclusively boy’s schools than coed schools. The age factor was directly related to bullying and it was found to be increasing with age from 8–13 years then decreasing in older children,which can probably be attributed to older children being more influenced by the world around them. This is in tally with the observations of Roberto Forero