A public health response to school bullying and school shootings

Bullying in school has a variety of negative consequences for victims, bullies, and bystanders. School shootings, where the victim becomes the attacker, are one extreme consequence of bullying. Despite the knowledge that school shootings are related to bullying, current policy is to handle these problems as separate issues. Bullying is addressed through pro-social interventions and school attacks are addressed by isolating, controlling, and attacking the offender. Oftentimes, school attacks end in suicide. In order to understand how we could best meet the needs of victims of bullying, we developed a survey to identify how victims react to bullying and what strategies children thought worked the best to reduce bullying. Students (n=2,640) in grades 3-8 from one inner city school district participated in the survey. Eighty-nine percent of students reported bullying victimization. Commonly used strategies were fighting back (63%), ignoring the bully (52.3%), and telling an adult at home (43.5%). Respondents believed that the most successful strategies were fighting back, making a safety plan, and telling a peer or adult at home. Since friends appeared to be a strong protective factor, one implication for primary prevention is developing a pro-social environment. Secondary prevention measures should build on what children believe works, promote safe strategies, and empower the victim. Tertiary prevention, addressing school attacks, should include a public health/ mental health response that recognizes the frame of mind of the attacker. Tertiary response would be consistent with current efforts in public health emergency preparedness.