October is National Bullying Prevention Month. In 2006, PACER’s National Bullying Prevention Center started the yearly campaign to educate and raise awareness of bullying prevention.
The Florida Department of Education defines bullying as systematically and chronically inflicting physical hurt or psychological distress on one or more students or employees that is severe or pervasive enough to create an intimidating, hostile or offensive environment; or unreasonably interfere with the individual’s school performance or participation.
A Florida State University expert is available to discuss bullying prevention.
Lyndsay Jenkins, assistant professor, Department of Educational Psychology and Learning Systems
(850) 644-9445; lnjenkins@fsu.edu
Jenkins is an assistant professor in the Department of Educational Psychology and Learning Systems and is a nationally certified school psychologist. Her research interests focus on bullying prevention. Jenkins also leads FSU’s Bullying Prevention Research Team, which includes undergraduate and graduate students at FSU. The team looks for ways to better understand bullying and how it can be decreased by improving peer and adult responses.
“Youth involved in bullying are at a greater risk of a number of mental health difficulties, such as elevated levels of depression, anxiety and loneliness. Some victimized students even report PTSD-like symptoms. There is growing evidence to suggest that bullying is linked to later dating violence. Being the victim of bullying not only impacts students’ mental health, but it can also lead to lower academic performance, including GPA, standardized tests, attendance problems and poorer attitudes toward school. Research has shown that being a victim is related to immediate social, emotional and academic difficulties that can continue for months and years, even after bullying stops.”
###