Victims of bullying tend to be fearful and anxious. They struggle with depression and feelings of loneliness and uselessness. They often feel that their voice doesn’t matter, that they themselves don’t matter, and these feelings often last into adulthood. They develop self-esteem issues and therefore, they don’t live to their full potential. In Egyptian society today, people don’t talk enough about the prevalence and consequences of bullying in schools.
I’m going to speak from my own personal experience and say that even though it has been about 10 years since I was last shoved into a locker or made fun of, I still get a gut-wrenching feeling of anxiety whenever I meet people for the first time. Whenever I start a new job or start a new class, I get this urge to just turn around and walk away. Incidents that occurred 10 years ago still affect me today.
Despite the commonly-held belief that bullying only happens in public schools or certain social classes, it happens everywhere, all the time, to many children. A 2008 study issued by the National Centre for Social and Criminal Research revealed that 30 percent of Egyptian schoolchildren are victims of violence, with 80 percent of cases inflicted from child to child.
I was enrolled in one of the leading schools here in Cairo, very hoity-toity and luxurious, and bullying was still happening and everyone knew about it – including teachers and school officials. Yet no one would talk about it.
Bullying doesn’t just leave a psychological mark on its victims, it can also be violent. In 2012, a horrible case of bullying at a school in Abu Dhabi left one girl in a coma and when she woke up two years later, she was told by doctors that she would be permanently disabled.
When I read the story of Lujain Hussein, the 13-year-old Emirati girl who was pushed against a wall by a group of boys in her school, resulting in a brain hemorrhage, I felt angry and compelled to write this article. I felt a burning urge to highlight this alarming problem and speak up about the issue and my own personal experiences with bullying.
It took two years for Lujain to recover from her brain injury; she lost part of her vision and will never be able to drive.
This is not to say that the psychological impact is trivial. The psychological trauma of bullying is equally excruciating and dangerous. Victims of bullying are more likely to suffer a variety of psychological disorders, such as PTSD and social anxiety disorders. They are also more likely to have suicidal thoughts or act upon them.
That saying, ”sticks and stones may shatter your bones but words break your soul” couldn’t be more accurate. That is exactly what bullying does, it eats away at the the very essence that makes us who we are.
The public’s inability to see this as an issue is one of the main reasons this issue is so prevalent. School officials bear the responsibility to not only educate parents about what is going on, but also actively seek a solution for the issue.
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