Articles labeled: bullying

A Kentucky middle schooler, suffering from peanut allergies, was the target of a new kind of bullying that puts her life at risk. Students that get wind of these types of allergies (food allergies) have fatal weapons at their disposal, usually found not further than their own pantries.

Students with food allergies are finding that being victimized by bullies can put them as serious, if not life threatening risk.

As the students neared the end of their lunchtime, a student was seen putting the crumbled cookies in the allergic student’s lunchbox, she said.

It was well known the other student suffered from severe peanut allergies, Deffendall said. There was no known history of problems between the two 13-year-old students, she said.

After an investigation, the student was arrested on a felony wanton endangerment charge and has been removed from the school, Deffendall said.

A person is charged with felony, or first-degree, wanton endangerment when someone is suspected of engaging in conduct that causes the danger of death or physical injury to another person, according to state legal statutes.

The student will face charges in the juvenile criminal justice system.

This story seems a bit obvious to us — common sense would dictate bullying would have some sort of psychological affect, just as parental verbal abuse does. But a new study is interesting in that it used identical twins to prove it:

A new study provides strong evidence that being bullied can cause children to develop depression and anxiety.

Among identical twin pairs in which one experienced bullying between the ages of 7 and 9 and the other did not, the bullied twin was significantly more likely to have symptoms of internalizing problems at age 10, Dr. Louise Arsenault of King’s College, London, and her colleagues found.

Internalizing problems are psychological problems in which negativity is directed inward toward the self, such as depression, as opposed to outwardly, such as conduct disorder.

A 7 year old boy is now in critical condition after being found unconscious, hanging by his shirt on a coat hook. A teacher found him, but doesn’t know how long he had been hanging there. It is unclear whether this was a freakish accident or if the boy was the victim of harassment and bullying.

AUSTIN, Texas — A 7-year-old boy is in critical condition after being found hanging by his shirt collar from a clothing hook in a charter school’s dressing room, and police tried to determine Thursday whether it was an attack or an accident.

The shirt collar cut off the boy’s oxygen, and he was unconscious when a teacher found him Wednesday, said police Lt. Mark Spangler. He was in critical condition at a hospital Thursday.