Tag Archives: Bullying

Voice of Experience: Social media and mental health

By Gregory K. Moffatt February 21, 2023

person sitting in front of a laptop with negative social media icons coming out of the screen indicating cyberbullying

Image by Htc Erl from Pixabay

Earlier this month, viewers across the country were stunned by a video showing the assault of 14-year-old Adriana Kuch in the hallway of her New Jersey high school and to learn that she took her own life the next evening. The cruel attack on the young woman by her high school peers was broadly shared on social media. Adriana’s father said the pain his daughter felt in being attacked paled in comparison to the humiliation she experienced online.

Bullying has always been a problem. I was bullied off and on through many of my years as a student. It was frightening and temporarily humiliating. But bullying has evolved with the advent of social media. Three major changes have escalated the impact of bullying.

The first major change involves increased exposure to embarrassment and humiliation. In 1968, the first year a bully picked on me at school, most of what he did to me was either just between us or witnessed only by a handful of people. Once it was over, it was over. I don’t remember ever carrying my humiliation into the next day, and each incident was known only by those who had witnessed it or those who heard about it during its short-lived “news” cycle.

Today, seemingly everyone has a device to document events, to share events and to view/experience these events as often as desired. That allows not only the “news” cycle to remain alive but for the entire world to witness one’s abasement. I can’t imagine the weight of that kind of ongoing embarrassment.

Recently, an Arizona man ran naked across the green at a Phoenix golf tournament. In one video, I saw hundreds of golf fans in the stands on their feet, nearly all of them with their phones in the air, capturing the event. This is our world.

Second, cyberbullying can take place no matter where the child is. When I was bullied, it was almost exclusively at school. Otherwise, bullies had no access to me or I had options for avoiding them. Today, a child can effectively be bullied while alone in the middle of a desert.

Finally, online bullying doesn’t require the bully to face the consequence of the mean thing said. I wrote a newspaper column for 30 years. Comments about my column were often kind and thoughtful, but people — many hiding behind the anonymity of screen names — said some of the meanest things on occasion. I couldn’t imagine anyone saying in person some of what they said online. In person, the speaker would have to defend themself and see the effects of their hurtful words firsthand.

Social media has allowed thoughtless people to quickly find one another. One mean comment or post can seemingly serve as a ready-made invitation for other equally thoughtless people to add mean posts of their own.

Online, a thoughtless or cruel post requires absolutely no thought and no exposure to the pain being caused. I would like to think that the bullies in the Adriana Kuch case felt remorse for their behavior following her suicide, but if she had not done that, they would never have known the tears she shed and the pain she bore in the privacy of her personal life.

A 2021 study by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) discovered that 30% of the teenage girls surveyed had considered suicide — a rate twice as high as among boys. That number was 50% for girls in the LGBTQ+ population. The study proposed that these rates were rising prior to the COVID-19 pandemic but that the isolation of the pandemic accentuated them.

Even before the pandemic, teens spent much of their time staring at their phones. For some teens during the pandemic, their devices were the only link they had to their social worlds. Like it or not, young people live much of their lives in a digital world. Bullying through text, video, Snapchat, Instagram or any of the other social media options is easy and quick — and the one doing the posting doesn’t have to face the hurt they are causing. What’s more, those hurtful words or images can be viewed over and over, not only by the rest of the world, but by the victim, leaving teens such Adriana feeling isolated, humiliated and hopeless.

These issues are not exclusive to teens, but the CDC study should ensure that those of us in the mental health community are alert to these frightening statistics for the teen female and LGBTQ+ populations in particular.

I encourage my clinicians and supervisees who work with these populations to include suicidal ideation as well as an overview of a client’s social media footprint in the intake process — something that was not even an issue 40 years ago when I started my practice.

 


Gregory K. Moffatt is a veteran counselor of more than 30 years and the dean of the College of Social and Behavioral Sciences at Point University. His monthly Voice of Experience column for CT Online seeks to share theory, ethics and practice lessons learned from his diverse career, as well as inspiration for today’s counseling professionals, whether they are just starting out or have been practicing for many years. His experience includes three decades of work with children, trauma and abuse, as well as a variety of other experiences, including work with schools, businesses and law enforcement. Contact him at Greg.Moffatt@point.edu. 


Opinions expressed and statements made in articles appearing on CT Online should not be assumed to represent the opinions of the editors or policies of the American Counseling Association.

Report: More than 1 in 5 children experience bullying

By Bethany Bray May 12, 2020

Bullying, a perennial issue for professional counselors who work with young clients both in and outside of school settings, remains prevalent among American youth. Researchers have found that more than one in five American youngsters experience bullying victimization from their peers – and prevalence is higher among children under age 12.

According to data from the National Survey of Children’s Health, parents of 22.4% of children ages 6 to 11 and 21% of adolescents ages 12 to 17 report their child “is being bullied, picked on, or excluded by other children.”

The data, compiled from the 2016-2017 National Survey, was published last month in the journal Public Health Reports by researchers from the U.S. Health Resources and Services Administration.

Researchers also parsed the data state-by-state in the journal article. The prevalence of bullying varied widely, from 16.5% of children in New York to 35.9% in Wyoming. Among adolescents, it ranged from 14.9% in Nevada to 31.6% in Montana.

Bullying among children or adolescents was greater than 30% in seven states: Arkansas, Kentucky, Maine, Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota and Wyoming.

 

Read the full report in Public Health Reports:  journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0033354920912713

 

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Related reading, from Counseling Today:

Five social, emotional and mental health supports that teens need to succeed

Leading an anti-bullying intervention for students with disabilities

When bias turns into bullying

Bullying: How counselors can intervene

 

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ACA resources:

 Journal of Counseling & Development articles:

ACA practice briefs

  • Youth Bullying Prevention
  • Bullying Intervention

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Follow Counseling Today on Twitter @ACA_CTonline and on Facebook at facebook.com/CounselingToday.

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Opinions expressed and statements made in articles appearing on CT Online should not be assumed to represent the opinions of the editors or policies of the American Counseling Association.

Five social, emotional and mental health supports that teens need to succeed

By Dakota King-White, Sade Vega and Nicholas Petty September 9, 2019

Many teenagers have been exposed to traumatic events, and most experience regular life stressors. Exposure to violence and other traumatic experiences can have a lifelong effect on learning and may negatively impact academic achievement. Among examples of traumatic events that some teenagers experience are community violence, school shootings, the loss of a loved one due to death, parental incarceration, divorcing parents, a parent or caregiver with mental illness, and substance abuse in the home. Within the school setting, the negative influence of trauma on teens may lead to poor concentration, declining academic performance, school absenteeism, and the decision to drop out. These challenges create barriers for the success of teens in the academic setting.

Schools across the United States have recognized the importance of providing school-based mental health support because these services benefit students academically, socially and emotionally. However, questions regarding the issues facing teens and the types of mental health supports needed to deal with these issues require further examination. Implementing a needs assessment can assist schools in uncovering the answer to these questions. The findings can then help determine what programming should be implemented to improve students’ overall development, such as teaching them social skills to help them become productive members of their communities and school settings.

We wanted to learn more about the social, emotional and mental health needs of teenagers, so we conducted a needs assessment in which we surveyed 198 high school students in a Midwestern city. The teens in our study identified the types of emotionally stressful experiences they have faced since attending high school. They also described what schools could do to make them feel supported and better able to deal with the related challenges.

The following sections present the five top issues identified by the students we surveyed, along with recommendations on ways that schools can support teenagers socially, emotionally and mentally.

 

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1) Social media makes peer pressure a 24/7 problem. Teens today are confronting certain pressures that teens in the past didn’t face. A prime example: Social media has become an indispensable part of teenagers’ lives. According to a 2018 report written for the Pew Research Center by Monica Anderson and Jingjing Jiang, YouTube, Instagram and Snapchat are the most popular online platforms among those ages 13-17, and most teens have access to these apps on their smartphones. Anderson and Jiang note in the report that 95% of teens have access to a smartphone, with 45% of teens acknowledging that they are online “almost constantly.”

This constant mobile connection creates the conditions for teenagers to consistently be exposed to peer pressure even outside of the school environment. Mina Park and colleagues in 2017, in a journal article in Cyberpsychology, Behavior, and Social Networking, noted that hyperconnectivity to social media can also lead to depression, negative body image and eating disorders.

What schools can do to help: Teens must be given an outlet to discuss their frustrations when it comes to dealing with peer pressure. Students should be directed to their school counselors or other trusted adults in the school with whom they can share their feelings and pressures and get supportive, confidential advice in return. It is also helpful to allow for genuine conversations in the classroom about the importance of students being confident in who they are and embracing their differences. Safe spaces in schools allow teens opportunities to feel supported in a neutral environment, to accept who they are, and to embrace differences among their peers.

 

2) Bullying is a significant issue. Peer pressure is not the only problem arising from constant social media access. The other, and even more troubling, issue is bullying. Teens may experience, witness or engage in bullying situations, including cyberbullying, which is more prevalent among teens.

The Bullying Statistics website (bullyingstatistics.org) notes that cyberbullying may consist of teens sending cruel messages, spreading gossip or posting threatening messages on social media platforms, pretending to be someone else on a social media account, or sexting. According to recent statistics from the website, more than 25% of teenagers have been exposed to cyberbullying situations that have had a negative impact on them. Bullying can have a significant effect on teens socially, emotionally and academically. Some of the negative impacts include depression, anxiety, attendance problems, and decrease in academic achievement. However, many teens who experience cyberbullying do not tell their parents or guardians about these painful experiences.

What schools can do to help: October is National Bullying Prevention Month, and many schools across the United States take time to develop effective strategies to raise awareness about bullying and to prevent bullying incidents on their campuses. It is important for schools to create an environment in which victims of bullying/cyberbullying, or teens who witness the bullying of a peer, can talk to trusted adults about bullying situations. Help your students by providing safe places in schools where teens can disclose when they or their peers are being bullied, or even create a hotline for students to report bullying situations.

Additionally, offer professional development to teachers and other staff members on identifying the warning signs of bullying, and provide them with effective strategies to help students who are being bullied. Likewise, many parents are unaware of how to support their teens when they are being bullied, so invite parents to on-campus workshops where they can learn ways to address these issues with their teens. During the parent and family sessions, discuss the various types of bullying that take place, the warning signs of bullying, and school and community resources for victims of bullying and cyberbullying. Workshops for parents and families can add another layer of support for young people who are affected by bullying.

 

3) Students are concerned about their personal safety. In our study, the third top concern that students reported was anxiety about their personal safety. According to the National Institute of Justice, school safety is currently a common concern among educators and administrators across the United States. Teens may not feel safe in their schools because of gun violence on school campuses across the country or even violence in their own communities or neighborhoods. The National Institute of Justice has stated that more schools have increased their security measures to protect students. Many of these schools have instituted locked doors, security cameras, hallway supervision, controlled building access, metal detectors and locker checks.

More than half of the ninth- and 10th-graders and more than 70% of the 11th- and 12th-graders we surveyed reported that they had experienced a traumatic event while attending high school. These various traumatic events can cause students to feel concern about their overall safety in their schools and communities. This type of stressor can in turn affect how teens engage in their educational environments.

What schools can do to help: Trauma-informed methods must be put in place to support students and their overall safety. Trauma-informed approaches focus on ways to ensure that students feel supported, listened to, and safe. Among the trauma-informed approaches that counselors can create in their schools are to build trust and rapport with students and to collaborate with outside community resources to support students who have been exposed to traumatic events. By getting to know your students, you will notice when their behaviors change, and because you have built trust with them, you can approach them in a friendly way to address these changes.

In addition, provide training on trauma-informed methods for teachers, support staff and administrators at your school. This training will help them create resources aimed at the needs of teens. Additionally, educators can seek professional help for their own personal traumas so that they may better interact with students who are dealing with stressors. By ensuring that teachers and staff members have access to community resources and training about personal safety and trauma, schools are developing leaders who can help students socially, emotionally and academically.

 

4) Students need help coping with their emotions. Teens’ emotions run rampant during their high school years. Most experience a range of emotions, including anger, fear, frustration, disappointment and hurt. These emotions may mask some of the broader issues that students face and that ultimately affect their academic performance.

Some of the students in our study participated in a small group that focused on developing social skills. The single-gender support group addressed the students’ academic, social and emotional needs. The sessions offered teens a safe place to identify stressors in their lives and to discuss the emotions attached to those stressors. By talking about their emotions, students were able to identify yet other emotions that were hiding underneath their anger and aggression. Throughout this process, the teens learned how to effectively articulate their emotions and to identify the underlying factors that were fueling them.

What schools can do to help: Encourage a supportive environment and training for students, such as small support groups facilitated by school counselors, clinical counselors, school psychologists or social workers, as well as peer-to-peer support groups. Teach teens the proper social skills related to identifying their emotions, and explain that all emotions are OK to have.

Quite often, teenagers express only the basic emotions when talking to others, especially adults. However, challenging them to look deeper and to identify the true emotion can be effective. Teens need safe places at school where they can learn how to cope with their anger and the other uncomfortable emotions that they often face.

 

5) Dealing with grief is important. A final concern students reported centered on dealing with grief from the loss of a loved one. Those students in our study who had experienced the loss of a loved one or who had witnessed a friend going through such a loss reported needing a supportive outlet to deal with those losses. Students may experience various losses during their teen years, such as the death of a friend or family member, and they are often left to process their emotions about the loss on their own. If schools are unaware that students have experienced a loss, those students may go without the support that is needed to help them process their grief. A lack of support during this time can have a significant impact on teens succeeding within the academic setting.

What schools can do to help: Build rapport early in the year with students so that they will be comfortable sharing should they experience a loss. During times of loss, allow students to grieve. Provide additional assistance by forming support groups for students who have experienced loss. This type of support can be offered through collaboration with local counseling agencies, hospices or other entities that support families experiencing loss. It is also helpful to maintain a list of community resources that address grief and loss. This community resource guide can be shared with teens, parents or caregivers, and other stakeholders.

Transforming school into an emotionally responsive environment

Students who are well-equipped socially, emotionally and mentally at the beginning of their academic careers can better cope when hardships occur. As counselors, we can help our students succeed in school and in life by first learning to identify their social, emotional and mental health needs, and then providing resources such as social skills workshops and support groups for them. Additionally, we can lead by example by improving our own social, emotional and mental health through professional development workshops that emphasize social and emotional learning practices.

Remember, school is not just a place where students gain academic knowledge; it is where they prepare for life. By doing our part to create a safe and emotionally supportive environment, we can increase the odds that students will succeed beyond the walls of the classroom.

 

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Dakota King-White is an assistant professor in counselor education at Cleveland State University. Prior to that, she worked in K-12 education as a school counselor, mental health therapist and administrator. Contact her at d.l.king19@csuohio.edu.

Sade Vega is a student in health science at Cleveland State University. In 2018, she received the university’s undergraduate student research award for her research on assessing the social, emotional and mental health needs of high school students. Contact her at s.m.vega@vikes.csuohio.edu.

Nicholas Petty is the director of undergraduate inclusive excellence at Cleveland State University. Prior to working at the university, he was an administrator in the Cleveland Metropolitan School District, where he earned national attention for his innovative approaches to behavioral intervention and student motivation. Contact him at n.petty@csuohio.edu.

 

Letters to the editor: ct@counseling.org

Counseling Today reviews unsolicited articles written by American Counseling Association members. To access writing guidelines and tips for having an article accepted for publication, go to ct.counseling.org/feedback.

 

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Opinions expressed and statements made in articles appearing on CT Online should not be assumed to represent the opinions of the editors or policies of the American Counseling Association.

Leading an anti-bullying intervention for students with disabilities

By Katherine A. Feather and Tiffany M. Bordonada January 10, 2019

For more than 40 years, bullying in schools has remained relatively stable and today is recognized as a serious social problem. In 2014, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the Department of Education released the first federal standardized definition of bullying, which includes unwanted aggressive behavior, observed or perceived power imbalance, and repetition of behaviors or high likelihood of repetition. In addition, the CDC and Department of Education acknowledged direct and indirect modes of bullying and four types of bullying that school-age children can experience: physical, verbal, relational and damage to property.

According to the National Center for Education Statistics (2015), approximately 1 in 4 students in the United States reported having been bullied at school. However, evidence suggests that school-age children with disabilities are two to three times more likely to be bullied than are their peers without disabilities (for more, see the three-volume set Disabilities: Insights From Across Fields and Around the World). It is absolutely critical for professional counselors to assist those who are targeted and support proactive interventions that decrease bullying for students with disabilities.

Intervention strategies that are grounded in social learning theory and established on client-centered, community-based and experiential methods have been shown to be successful with children who have disabilities. Such interventions have a positive effect on children’s self-efficacy, self-determination and social skills. Furthermore, counselors can adapt experiential-based activities to provide these students with opportunities to learn new skills, make decisions, experience successes and take calculated risks. Finally, counselors need to recognize the strengths of students with disabilities, teach them to feel comfortable with who they are and empower them to implement bullying prevention skills.

This article will outline proactive prevention in terms of experiential group activities that focus on self-efficacy, self-determination and social skills training when working with school-age children with disabilities. The experiential group activity we will be describing was originally developed by Able SC, an empowerment and advocacy organization in Columbia, South Carolina, for people with disabilities. We collaborated with Able SC and tailored the activity to meet the needs of middle school and high school students with disabilities.

Aims

The experiential activity includes four primary objectives that positively affect self-efficacy, self-determination and social skills. The objectives are to help students:

1) Identify and understand various bullying behaviors

2) Recognize the warning signs when a person is being bullied

3) Learn strategies to manage bullying

4) Learn steps to take in the here and now to address bullying

Preconditions

Prior to engaging group members in the experiential activity, several preconditions should be met. First, counselors must have a strong therapeutic alliance with the participants before engaging them in the group activity. Second, counselors should provide proper accommodations to address the unique needs of the group members. Third, counselors must be willing to be creative and flexible to adapt the experiential activity to the individual strengths of the group members. Fostering a strengths-based approach is imperative when helping school-age children with disabilities to explore their self-efficacy. Finally, counselors must display competence with multicultural social justice counseling before working with children with disabilities.

The process

The first part of the group facilitation process involves assisting group members with understanding the various types of bullying (i.e., physical, verbal, relational and damage to property). The role of the group leader is to facilitate a discussion about these various bullying types, which may prompt group members to recognize specific examples. Additionally, the group facilitator should discuss the importance of recognizing real or perceived power imbalance and determining how often the power differential occurs. In other words, was this a one-time incident, or was it done repeatedly to hurt the individual? The group facilitator must guide students in understanding these two concepts that help to define bullying: observed or perceived power imbalance and repetition of behaviors. The group facilitator should also assist students in understanding the confusing distinction between when someone is joking versus when someone is actually engaging in bullying behavior.

To foster another mode of understanding, the group facilitator can also engage group members in a role-play demonstration to act out the different types of bullying. If the participants find it difficult to participate in the role-play, group facilitators can provide examples of the types of bullying to ensure support for students during the demonstration. In addition, it is important to identify the individuals involved with the bullying episode (i.e., bully, target and bystander) to provide clarity during the role-play. For instance, the group facilitator should discuss with group members how the bystander can be the most influential person in the situation either by acting as a solution to the problem or by instigating the bullying. Finally, the group leader encourages group members to identify characteristics of being a bully.

This will help students to recognize these traits so they can avoid engaging with those who display such behaviors.

The second part of the experiential group activity consists of identifying warning signs that an individual might be being bullied. These signs include:

  • Physical signs (e.g., cuts, bruises, scratches, headaches or stomachaches, damaged possessions, missing possessions)
  • Emotional signs (e.g., withdrawal or shyness, anxiety, depression, aggression, suicidal ideation)
  • Behavioral signs (e.g., changes in eating or sleeping habits, nightmares, no longer wanting to participate in school or activities that he or she once enjoyed, bullying siblings)
  • Academic signs (e.g., changing the manner in which he or she gets to school, being driven to school instead of riding the bus, having a noticeable drop in grades)

After determining the group’s understanding of the warning signs, the group facilitator can propose an experiential group activity in which the group members identify strategies to manage bullying. The group facilitator can engage the students in a role-play scenario in which the target initially fights back. The facilitator should then prompt a dialogue on the positive and negative consequences of engaging in this approach. Next, the group facilitator encourages the group to identify nonviolent strategies that the target can use in the same scenario. This will prompt group members to recognize how implementing a nonviolent approach to bullying can be an effective option.

Next, the group facilitator needs to co-construct with the group members prevention strategies to manage bullying behavior. A few general prevention tactics include:

  • Telling an adult
  • Walking away
  • Ignoring the bully
  • Avoiding the bully by interacting with friends or avoiding places the bully is known to be

Group members should be taught to understand the differences between the roles of bully, target and bystander and recognize appropriate prevention strategies that they can use if they find themselves in any of these categories. For example, the group facilitator could encourage the group members to identify effective prevention strategies specifically for the bystander role. These strategies include telling the bully to stop, helping the target to walk away, recruiting friends to intervene and getting an adult.

To reiterate, it is important to provide group members with specific scenarios to ensure that they understand the differences between the three roles and know which prevention strategies are appropriate for each scenario. Furthermore, have group members share times when they have fallen into the specific category of bully, bystander or target to guarantee that they are addressing their personal experiences with bullying.

Additionally, the group facilitator can engage the group in a role-play exercise to review the three categories and to collaboratively identify:

1) The bullying behavior

2) How the target reacted to the bullying

3) How the bystander(s) reacted

4) How the bully responded to the situation

5) Whether the bullying was managed in an effective way

6) How the bullying scenario could have been handled differently

7) How the group members would feel as the target in the scenario

This role-play provides group members with a greater sense of self-awareness as it relates to self-determination, self-efficacy and social skills. In addition, the role-play increases empathy toward others because group members vicariously experience the thoughts, feelings and behaviors of the target.

Finally, the group facilitator can engage the group members in personal action plans to reinforce what was previously reviewed and to address steps to manage bullying (for a detailed figure outlining the personal action plan, see Katherine A. Feather’s 2016 article “Antibullying interventions to enhance self-efficacy in children with disabilities,” published in the Journal of Creativity in Mental Health). The facilitator asks the group members to independently acknowledge personal situations in which they have been bullied; their thoughts, feelings and reactions to the experience; how they handled it; and what they could have done differently. Once they have completed the chart, group members are prompted to share their stories if they feel comfortable. The personal action plan is an important part of the experiential activity because it gives group members something tangible they can take with them to remind them of what they have learned and that they can reference in the future.

Finally, at the discretion of the group facilitator, group members are encouraged to discuss assertive communication and the various communication styles, such as the difference between “I” and “You” statements. This particular discussion can transition into recognizing the importance of self-advocacy and one’s ability to make informed choices. The group facilitator can end the session by reinforcing individual empowerment and emphasizing the group members’ potential to manage bullying. The tools used to combat bullying speak to the group members’ self-efficacy, showing them that they have the ability to exert control over their own behavior, motivation and social environment (as explained by Albert Bandura in his 1977 article “Self-efficacy: Toward a unifying theory of behavioral change”).

Modifications to the process

Counselors who use this experiential activity may wish to adapt the group in the following ways:

1) Assess whether a particular student would be a better candidate for individual counseling and modify the activity for individual, rather than group, counseling.

2) When implementing the experiential training, augment the activity to meet the needs of the group participants. For example, for the personal action plan, participants can use numerous mediums to complete the activity (e.g., act out the steps, cut out pictures from a magazine, draw, write, use note cards with words, use assistive technology, discuss steps verbally).

3) Delivery of the experiential group activity must be based on students’ presenting characteristics to ensure full understanding of the material. For example, counselors need to address a comprehensive range of needs among students with disabilities. Therefore, counselors can provide additional scenarios of the components for the activity. This will encourage repetition and opportunities for practice. Counselors are also encouraged to collaborate with school personnel to ensure that they are meeting the needs of the student and integrating all necessary interventions to promote student success.

4) This experiential group activity may not be applicable for all students with disabilities. We suggest that counselors consult and collaborate with school staff to gauge the appropriateness of the intervention for individual students.   

Considerations

Counselors must intervene in a timely manner by recognizing, assessing and engaging students in activities that will combat bullying and provide them with the skills to be successful in the school environment. However, counselors must be sensitive to group membership. Therefore, counselors may want to consider making the group available to peers without disabilities. Inclusive practices may buffer against bullying by providing peer models to students with disabilities, as well as by promoting social competence among all students. Isolating students with disabilities does not provide them with the practice and validation they need to develop appropriate social skills. Thus, combining students with disabilities and their peers without disabilities fosters an inclusive approach and ultimately enhances a community of knowledge and understanding.

Finally, prior to implementing this experiential activity, we encourage counselors to become familiar with the social model of disability and the capabilities framework versus the medical model of disability. The social model of disability is a different way of viewing the world and challenges the typical attitudes toward disability. Fostering a capabilities approach validates the ideologies of inclusion that stress equality, acceptance and valued participation. The capabilities approach is a holistic social justice initiative that assesses disability on the basis of one’s abilities and functioning within society. Counselors need to recognize the impact that society has on the individual and the barriers that students with disabilities face on a daily basis.

 

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Helpful resources for counselors

  1. PACER’s National Bullying Prevention Center (pacer.org/bullying/resources/students-with-disabilities)
  2. StopBullying.gov page on bullying and youth with disabilities and special health needs (stopbullying.gov/at-risk/groups/special-needs)
  3. “Bullying and Disability: An Overview of the Research Literature” (tinyurl.com/BullyingAndDisability)

 

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Knowledge Share articles are developed from sessions presented at American Counseling Association conferences.

Katherine A. Feather is a licensed professional counselor in Arizona and an assistant clinical professor in the Department of Educational Psychology at Northern Arizona University. Contact her at Katherine.Feather@nau.edu.

Tiffany M. Bordonada is an assistant professor in the Department of Counseling and Human Services at the University of Scranton. Contact her at Tiffany.Bordonada@scranton.edu.

 

Letters to the editor: ct@counseling.org

 

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Opinions expressed and statements made in articles appearing on CT Online should not be assumed to represent the opinions of the editors or policies of the American Counseling Association.

When bias turns into bullying

By Lindsey Phillips June 29, 2018

We all have our biases — but just because bias is a universal part of the human experience doesn’t mean it is something we should ever dismiss offhandedly, either in ourselves or others. That’s because bias has serious consequences, and when left unchecked, it can turn into bullying. A 2012 study of California middle and high school students published in the American Journal of Public Health found that 75 percent of all bullying originated from some type of bias against a person’s race, sexual orientation, religion, disability or other personal characteristic.

People often talk about bullying in general terms. But as Anneliese Singh, a professor of counseling and associate dean for the Office of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion at the University of Georgia, points out, “If you look more closely at ‘general bullying,’ what you’ll see is a lot of bias-based bullying.”

SeriaShia Chatters-Smith, an assistant professor of counselor education and coordinator of the clinical mental health counseling in schools and communities program at the Pennsylvania State University, defines bias-based bullying as bullying that is specifically based on an individual’s identifying characteristics, such as race/ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation or weight. For example, adolescents might create Snapchat stories that attack someone on the basis of their race, weight or sexual orientation, and parents or teachers might treat children differently on the basis of their skin color, notes Chatters-Smith, an ACA member who presented on “Bullying Among Diverse Populations” at the ACA 2017 Conference & Expo in San Francisco. Research indicates that individuals of color, particularly black and Hispanic men, are more likely to be identified as being aggressive, she adds.

In her research on transgender people, Singh, who co-founded the Georgia Safe Schools Coalition and founded the Trans Resilience Project, has found that bias-based bullying can be based on appearance, gender expression or gender identity, and it can range from name-calling to physical and sexual harassment and assault.

A four-letter word

When people start talking about someone having a bias, those four letters typically trigger a negative reaction and shut down conversation, which isn’t productive. Thus, Chatters-Smith argues that helping people understand that everyone has biases is crucial to addressing bias-based bullying.

However, this task can be difficult because people often resist closely exploring their own prejudices. Counselors should help clients realize that just because everyone has biases doesn’t mean they are excused from recognizing and addressing their own, Chatters-Smith argues.

Because bias is often an emotionally charged topic, Chatters-Smith finds it helpful to start with a nonthreatening example. After pointing out bias, she asks clients when they first identified something as their favorite color. Most people can’t remember when this color preference started because they were young, Chatters-Smith says. She explains how after someone establishes a color preference, the brain starts to sort things by that color.

“When you see something that is your favorite color, you are more likely to gravitate toward it. You have more positive feelings toward cars that are your favorite color. … And sometimes a car may not be the best-looking car, but because it’s our favorite color, we gravitate toward it. That is bias,” Chatters-Smith explains.

Bias is a kind of sorting process that our brain goes through, she continues. “The experiences that we have with individuals can then cause us to have specific attitudes toward someone, and when we see them, we prejudge that they are going to act or be a certain way because of those experiences. … We do an automatic sort.”

Counselors are not immune to bias either. For example, a counselor might assume that a black male client who is unemployed did something to cause his unemployment, Chatters-Smith says. If this happens, the counselor needs to take a step back and ask why he or she is entertaining that assumption, she continues.

These internalized biases can also have a direct effect on students. For example, Singh says, LGBTQ students will not feel safe reporting bias-based bullying by their peers when they hear educators or school counselors expressing anti-queer or anti-trans views. Educators can also hold bias against students in special education, which may limit the opportunities those students have to learn, she adds.

Singh, an American Counseling Association member and licensed professional clinical counselor in Georgia, finds cognitive behavior therapy (CBT) helpful because challenging irrational thoughts is at the heart of addressing bias-based bullying. Thus, counselors need to ask clients and themselves some CBT-related questions: Where did you learn this thought? What research supports this idea?

Counselors “have to become strong advocates in order to interrupt those beliefs systems because the person enacting them — whether or not they’re conscious [of it] — isn’t going to stop until there’s an advocacy intervention,” Singh says.

After making clients (or educators) aware of bias, counselors can work with them to figure out times that they might have sorted a person into a category before getting to know that person and then brainstorm ways to manage that differently in the future.

Counselors can also benefit from bias-based bullying training. In working with Stand for State, a bystander intervention program at Penn State, Chatters-Smith found that certain questions or situations related to bias would cause the counselors participating in the bias-based education to pause or stumble. “A person who is not educated to know [how to respond] can get really thrown off guard,” she says.

Chatters-Smith knows from experience. Once in a workshop, she mentioned how saying that all Jewish people are good with money is an example of a racially charged joke. One of the participants responded, “But all Jewish people are good with money.”

Chatters-Smith questioned this statement by asking, “Really? All Jewish people? Where does this stereotype come from? Is this a racially based stereotype that is meant in a negative way?”

“One of the most damaging things that can happen in [a] workshop is if a bias educator is perpetuating bias,” Chatters-Smith contends. This experience helped her realize that the trainers themselves needed training to be effective at bias and discrimination education. She is currently developing workshops and a workbook that will allow counselors to practice answering questions and go through specific scenarios related to bias-based bullying to help them gain confidence and knowledge in handling these challenging situations.

Uncovering bias

A counselor’s role is to interrupt the systems of bias-based bullying, Singh argues. This process starts with the intake assessment, which should clearly define what bias-based bullying is and provide examples, she continues.

Counselors need to ask upfront questions about bias and harassment in counseling to let clients know that these issues exist and that they affect mental health, Chatters-Smith says. The best way to know if it is happening is to ask, she adds.

Of course, when assessing clients, counselors can also be alert to signs that bias-based bullying may be occurring. Anxiety or fear of being bullied may cause younger children to wet their beds at certain times of the year (right before school starts, for example) or to avoid public bathrooms, Chatters-Smith notes. She advises school counselors to pay close attention to the dynamics between students in the cafeteria. “A child can be sitting at a table full of kids because they don’t want to sit alone, but no one is interacting with them. No one is talking to them. They’re purposely being excluded,” she says.

Singh and Chatters-Smith also urge counselors to watch for signs of depression or anxiety, client withdrawal, client complaints that are not tied to anything specific, chronic tardiness, or changes in client behavior such as nervousness, avoiding school or sessions, or missing certain classes.

Counselors should exercise the same level of vigilance with young adult and adult clients. Chatters-Smith finds that counselors often fail to factor in the isolation, feeling of being ostracized and lack of belonging that some minority college students experience at predominantly white institutions. Counselors “know all of [these factors] impact mental health from [the] K-12 research of bullying but seem to forget about it when people graduate from high school,” she argues.

In addition, counselors often “do not factor in the cultural pieces of experiencing bias-based bullying at work. It manifests itself differently,” Chatters-Smith says. For example, individuals may go on short-term or long-term disability, or bullying may result in harassment claims or absenteeism from work. In certain instances, clients may not be able to put a finger on the core issue causing them not to enjoy the workplace, or they find that for some unknown reason, they can’t please a co-worker or employer, she says.

Sometimes, clients don’t even recognize that bias-based bullying could be an issue until the counselor brings it up, Chatters-Smith adds. Thus, she advises counselors to ask questions such as “Have you experienced any prejudice or discrimination at work?” or “Do you have increased anxiety around yearly evaluations for work?”

“In any organization that has built-in hierarchies, bullying [is likely] to occur,” Chatters-Smith says. For example, in the military, transgender individuals still face discrimination, and often discrimination is based on race or socioeconomic status, such as enlisted individuals versus officers who require a college education and receive more money and leadership positions, she explains.

Avoiding assumptions

When people are introduced to the concept of bias-based bullying, they often assume that it involves someone from a dominant group bullying someone from an oppressed group. “When you think about bias-based bullying, typically people are going to gravitate toward majority [versus] minority … but at the same time, it can happen within group,” points out Cassandra Storlie, an assistant professor of counselor education and supervision at Kent State University. She cautions counselors not to overlook the possibility of intracultural bullying because it does happen. For example, a Latino child may bully another Latino child because that child doesn’t speak Spanish, or an individual may bully someone else of the same ethnicity because that person’s skin color is judged to be “too dark” or “too light.”

Just because someone is oppressed does not mean that they can’t be oppressing others, Chatters-Smith emphasizes. “For centuries … African Americans have bullied each other based on darker complexion versus lighter complexion, and the same thing happens in Latino and Hispanic groups as well,” she says. “What makes it identity based and bias based is because there are biases that come along with the perspectives of individuals who are of darker skin. Even though it’s within a specific racial category, the bias is still there, and then the individual still has the psychological impact because they’re being bullied just for who they are.”

In addition, although people of color have a higher likelihood of being bullied in predominantly white settings, bias-based bullying can still occur when they are in settings with higher diversity, Chatters-Smith notes. The bias may just take another form and be based on characteristics other than race, such as sexual orientation, she explains.

Within transgender communities, someone who is more binary identified and operates with certain gender stereotypes may discriminate against another transgender person for not looking enough like a woman or a man, says Singh, a past president of both the Southern Association for Counselor Education and Supervision and the Association for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Issues in Counseling. Within-group bullying is particularly painful to the individuals who experience it because the group is supposed to be their source of support and belonging, she says. 

Singh also points out that bias-based bullying can be targeted at anyone based on how he or she is perceived. “If they’re perceived to step out of a gender or sexual orientation box, even if they don’t have that identity, they may experience [bias-based bullying].” In fact, Singh says, a substantial amount of anti-queer and anti-trans bullying is actually experienced by cisgender and straight people.

Creating a positive, safe environment

“Ethnic identities are strong protective factors,” says Storlie, president-elect of the North Central Association for Counselor Education and Supervision. She encourages counselors to find ways to celebrate cultures and differences. If counselors are practicing in a school district or community that isn’t taking preventative measures against bias-based bullying and being inclusive and advocating for all students, then they need to take initiative and educate those communities, Storlie says.

One approach that Storlie, an ACA member and a licensed professional counselor with supervisory designation in Ohio, suggests is to mention how diverse populations are increasing. In fact, according to the National Center for Education Statistics, the percentage of white students enrolled in public elementary and secondary schools decreased to less than 50 percent in 2014, while minority students (black, Hispanic, Asian, Pacific Islander, American Indian/Alaska Native and those of two or more races) made up at least 75 percent of the total enrollment in approximately 30 percent of these schools.

Storlie works with a school district that has Ohio’s second-highest number of students who speak English as a second language. Roughly 50 percent of the student body is Latino — up from approximately 2 percent only two decades ago.

When Storlie first walked into the school district, she couldn’t find any Spanish on the walls of the schools or in school materials, but since she started working with the educators and teachers, all of the school district’s documents are translated. “If you’re handing this information out to students … you’ve got to make sure it’s in the right language,” she argues.

Schools are in transition now because of increased diversity, Storlie notes. “It’s happening across the country where teachers don’t look like the kids that they’re teaching anymore, and they have stereotypes that can be pervasive,” she observes. Thus, counselors need to work with educators and communities to ensure that they are being inclusive.

Storlie advises counselors to facilitate events such as English classes for parents whose first language is not English to improve communication between teachers and parents, and workshops to educate parents, school personnel and the community on bias-based bullying. Counselors might also provide workshops for school personnel on multicultural competency, she says.

The Human Rights Campaign Foundation’s Welcoming Schools program is one helpful resource, Chatters-Smith says. The program provides training and resources such as recommended books, lesson plans and videos to school educators to help them create inclusive, supportive school environments and aid them in preventing bias-based bullying.

Building strong relationships

Storlie has found that teachers and school personnel who instill hope in their students — regardless of any identifying characteristic — have the best outcomes. These students often have higher levels of school engagement, demonstrate greater resilience and enjoy more academic success.

The therapeutic relationship can play a central role in instilling hope and achieving these positive outcomes, Storlie argues. For that reason, she adds, counselors shouldn’t become so focused on theories and techniques that they forget what it means to foster a good relationship with their clients. Among individuals who have been oppressed or marginalized, there is often an “us versus them” attitude, so the challenge for counselors is finding a way to reconnect and develop the relationship, Storlie says.

Trust is one key component of building a strong relationship with clients. However, Chatters-Smith has found that adults don’t always trust children’s reports of bias and discrimination. In her private practice, Chatters-Smith often works with children of color who report that no one believes them when they complain about bias-based bullying. Over time, this disbelief can result in their silence. Thus, she emphasizes, it is crucial that counselors believe children when they report having experienced bias-based bullying and discrimination.

In addition, Storlie stresses the importance of taking a team approach to bias-based bullying. “You can’t do it solo. … You really have to have the team approach because that’s how change happens,” she says. This is especially true for school counselors confronted with high student-to-counselor ratios, she adds.

When school counselors notice bias-based bullying in their schools, they should connect with other leaders in the school district and position themselves as a part of the leadership team, Storlie advises. Then, in this leadership position, counselors can educate school personnel on warning signs and interventions for bias-based bullying, thereby creating a team approach to intervening, she explains.

School counselors should also strive to work with families to address bias-based bullying. Because family members’ work schedules may not coincide with school system hours, counselors might have to get creative to find ways to reach families, Storlie continues. “School counselors who stay in their offices are not going to be able to reach families the same way that … [counselors] doing outreach with families would,” she adds.

In Storlie’s work with undocumented Latino youth, she found that the school counselors who were present, who made a point of getting out of their offices and who were visible to parents — for example, showing up at basketball games after school hours — enjoyed the most effective relationships with families and students. Their students were also more receptive to looking ahead and thinking about their future careers, she adds.

Bystander intervention

“What hurts [children] typically is not specifically the bullying itself. What hurts them is the other children around who stand and watch it happen,” Chatters-Smith asserts. The inaction and silence of bystanders causes people who are bullied to feel depressed and isolated, and it feeds into dysfunctional thinking that they are not good enough and no one cares about them, she adds.

In workshops, Chatters-Smith uses an active witnessing program to train people how to respond to discrimination and bias. Because bias-based bullying is often verbal, onlookers can state that they disagree with what is being said and question the validity of the biased comment, she elaborates. Bystanders can also support the person being bullied by telling them they are not alone or calling for help, she says.

Bystanders can also help people who commit the offense to self-reflect by asking them to repeat what they said and letting them know that it was hurtful, Chatters-Smith continues. If a bystander doesn’t feel safe to intervene at the time of the incident, they can later call a manager (if the bullying incident happened in an establishment or organization) or notify someone about what they witnessed, she advises.

Chatters-Smith has also used ABC’s What Would You Do? — a hidden-camera TV program that acts out scenes of conflict to see if bystanders intervene — in her workshops. She plays the scenarios from the show but not the bystanders’ reactions. Instead, she has workshop participants use the skills they have learned in the workshop to see how they would respond.

The more aware counselors become of bias, prejudice and discrimination in their day-to-day lives, the more it will affect them in their work with clients, Chatters-Smith says. “Practice is what helps us move forward as individuals,” she explains. “When you are at the store, when you are eating in a restaurant, when you are in the mall, when you see these things happening, if you feel [like you] know what to do, you’ll become more aware of what it is and you’ll feel more confident at not only being able to intervene and be empowered in your everyday life but also being able to talk to your clients about their experiences.”

Storlie and Singh both tout training student leaders as an effective approach to preventing bias-based bullying. Often, students — not counselors — are the ones who hear about or witness these instances of bullying. So, counselors can work with these student leader groups to teach them how to intervene, Storlie says.

Another way to create a team approach to bias-based bullying intervention is through the use of popular opinion leaders, Singh says. With this approach, school counselors and teachers nominate student leaders who represent different groups in the school (à la The Breakfast Club). With the counselor’s guidance, these students discuss bias-based bullying, what they’ve noticed and how they might be able to change it. Then, after learning bias-based bullying interventions, the popular opinion leaders try them out and report on which ones worked and which ones didn’t, Singh explains.

An ongoing issue 

Singh warns of the danger of minimalizing bias-based bullying — such as saying that people “don’t mean it” — because it sends a message that it is OK to have bias. Comments that dismiss bias-based bullying “can really add up over time in the form of microaggressions for transgender people,” she argues. “But, more importantly, [these comments create] a hostile environment in society, and that hostile environment in society can set transgender people up for experiencing violence.”

“When children grow up in an environment where they are taught implicit and explicit messages about whose identities matter and whose don’t, and then there’s power attached to that, then you’re going to see those negative health outcomes,” Singh argues. “And they’re not just negative health outcomes and disparities. They’re verbal, physical and sexual harassment that play out across people’s bodies and communities. Those microaggressions add up to macroaggressions on a larger scale.”

Apologizing isn’t the answer either. Often, people who bully, commit a microaggression or say something prejudiced will apologize by saying that they didn’t intend it that way, Chatters-Smith says. “It’s not intent that matters. It’s impact. … Whether or not you intended it, it doesn’t matter. It hurt the person.”

One possible solution is to start bias education at a young age so that over the life span, people are more aware of bias-based bullying and discrimination, Singh says. Counselors can challenge the internalized stereotypes that people learn in society about themselves and others and counter those biased messages with real-life experiences and compassion, she adds.

Education and awareness are key because bias-based bullying is an ongoing issue. “[Bias] is not going to go away. … People are going to find a way to treat each other differently. I think that what will change is more and more people not accepting it,” Chatters-Smith says.

This past spring, social media revealed another case of discrimination when two black men who were waiting for a friend were arrested at a Starbucks in Philadelphia on suspicion of trespassing. The incident might have received little notice except that a white woman posted a video of the arrest on Twitter and challenged the injustice, which prompted protests. Starbucks responded by apologizing and announcing that it would close thousands of stores for an afternoon to conduct racial bias training in May.

Even though this injustice never should have occurred, the public outcry sent a message that these two men were not alone and that bias is not acceptable, Chatters-Smith says. “The intervention is what’s going to change [things],” she says. “If we have more eyes on it, hopefully we can reduce the impact and reduce the duration and the longevity of the impact of these instances.”

Chatters-Smith, Singh and Storlie all agree that counselors have an important role to play in educating people about bias and building strong partnerships between educators, parents, students and communities. “[Counselors] are in the business of helping people challenge inaccurate, internalized thoughts,” Singh points out. “Counselors have to challenge those thoughts and help rebuild beliefs systems that include the value of a wide variety of social identities.”

 

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Lindsey Phillips is a contributing writer to Counseling Today and a UX content strategist living in Northern Virginia. Contact her at consulting@lindseynphillips.com or through her website at lindseynphillips.com.

Letters to the editor:ct@counseling.org

 

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Opinions expressed and statements made in articles appearing on CT Online should not be assumed to represent the opinions of the editors or policies of the American Counseling Association.