Bullying rife in our schools and workplaces – what can be done?

Pink Shirt Day, New Zealand’s anti-bullying awareness day, is on 28 April - this is the perfect time to be thinking about what can be done around bullying in our communities. 

Many people may feel frightened to speak out against bullying and that there is no way out of a harassment situation due to a lack of support. It’s important we provide a voice for these people, and do what we can to start effectively combating the issue. 

Let's start by wearing a pink shirt next Wednesday. This will likely cause a stir, especially if pink isn't usually part of your daily attire!  But it should help to open up the discussion and let those without a voice know we care and there is support for them to come out against bullies.

More positive action from the Mental Health Foundation will be the release of filmed interviews from the presenters at its recent Bullying Forum, giving access to some of the presentations and online access to a directory of services and resources to tackle bullying in schools.

We would love to hear from you if you have more to add to our list of on- and off-line anti-bullying resources, as we want it to be as robust and as useful as possible!

About the Bullying Forum
The highly successful one-day forum included presentations from The Peace Foundation, The Children's Commission, Rainbow Youth, Eating Disorder Education Network, Rape Prevention Education and more. 

Along with some other important goings-on, such as Dr. Janis Carroll-Lind's release of a recent report on the effect of bullying on young people, and the release of the Youth 2007 survey, we were able to ignite some much-needed discussion around bullying in schools. 

Since the forum, the conversation has moved on to workplace bullying, where statistics show the issue is rife. One out of five people in employment report they have suffered from workplace bullying - one of the worst rates in the developed world.
 
High rates of workplace bullying for people with experience of mental distress
While New Zealand’s population as a whole is experiencing high levels of workplace bullying, this is heightened for those with experience of mental illness.

At the recent Building Bridges Conference, Vanessa Cooper (Auckland regional Like Minds programme) said “over half the participants in my research had experienced workplace discrimination… among these was workplace bulling - this was experienced by having opinions discredited, having their responses seen as overreactions due to their illness, and a lot of peer rejection...  Bullying and office gossip was a large deterrent to experiencing a supportive work environment.”

About Pink Shirt Day
Pink Shirt Day came out of Nova Scotia a few years ago when a group of students all wore pink shirts to school as an act of solidarity to show support for one of their peers who was being bullied.  Since then the idea has become a worldwide awareness project aimed at helping to combat bullying in schools.

Tina Helm, Mental Health Promoter, Youth