View Single Post
  #7  
Old September 25th 04, 04:56 AM
Cele
external usenet poster
 
Posts: n/a
Default

On Sat, 25 Sep 2004 04:31:48 +0100, "Paul Griffiths"
wrote:

"Cele" wrote in message
.. .
On Fri, 24 Sep 2004 19:05:31 +0100, "Paul Griffiths"
wrote:
"Karen O'Mara" wrote in message
. com...

Saw this on another newsgroup and thought it was so terribly sad.
Since bullying has been mentioned here as something we worry about for
our kids, I'd thought I'd re-post it here.

Yeah, she was pretty much just up the road from us here. Had quite an
impact on my school at the start of term. Hopefully for the better.

We'll
see.


We had a similar one here a few years back. The girl was Dawn Marie
Wesley. She named the girls who were bullying her in her suicide note,
and they were charged and some convicted.


Doesn't help her, may help the parents but it sure as hell sends a good
message. Not aware of anything similar ever having happened here.


It was taken very seriously partly because of that. That and the Virk
case and one other one, in which a boy jumped off the Patullo bridge,
have really increased the awareness of the importance of addressing
bullying in these parts. Don't know that much headway has been made,
but at least people are paying attention. All of this was coming out
at around the same time as Columbine and also a school shooting in
Taber Alberta. All killers in those situations were also kids who'd
been badly bullied as well, and of course in the case of Eric Harris
and Dylan Klebold, they suicided as well.

We also had the Reena Virk case on the island where Reena was beaten
to death by bullies. Some were convicted and one is going into the
third trial.


I think we may have talked about this one. Not nice.


Yeah, we did. It's the one where they found gravel in her lungs on
autopsy, indicating that while alive her head was held face down in
the gravel in the river. Very foul.

Both girls were 14.


That seems to be pretty much at the centre of the age range for this sort of
thing so far as I can tell. I haven't heard of many kids under 12 or over
16 attempting suicide because of bullying. Some kind of developmental stage
I assume. Something to watch out for certainly.


Certain things seem to peak around that age, but I suspect quite a lot
of people over 16 do attempt suicide with bullying as a factor. Not, I
mean, quite a lot of people overall, but rather, quite a lot of the
teens 16 and up who *do* attempt suicide, I suspect, have histories of
being bullied. But at that age, they tend to get diagnosed with full
blown depression and other mental health conditions, so the role of
bullying likely gets fuzzier.

I guess the thing is, if people treat you badly enough for long
enough, depression can ensue, and suicide can be an expression of
extreme depression. I suspect it's more that we're more *exposed* to
bullying in early and mid adolesence, because after that, kids get
gradually more civilised. That's coupled with the height of exposure
coinciding with developmental immaturity and wild hormones that make
us least able to handle it at its peak incidence. :-( Sucks to be a
teen sometimes, in so many ways.

TTYL

Cele