The statistics that report how much bullying causes people to commit suicide are alarming!!!!!!!!
According to the Center for Disease Control, suicide is the 3rd leading cause of death among young people. The CDC also reports that for every suicide among young people, there are about 100 attempts. They also report more than 14% of high school students have contemplated suicide and 7% have attempted suicide.
Yale University has reported bully victims are 2-9% more likely to consider suicide than non-victims.
A study was done in Britain that reported more than half of suicides among young people are related to bullying. The same study reported girls who are between 10 and 14 are at an even higher risk for suicide.
ABC news reported that nearly 30% of students are either bullies or victims of bullies and about 160,000 kids stay home from school every day because they have a fear of being bullied.
Bully-related suicides include: physical bullying, emotional bullying, cyberbullying and sexting. Also, circulating messages, photos, and/or nude photos of another person in a derogatory manner are activities that cause people to consider suicide as a way to escape all of the horrible damage other people are doing to them.
In schools where bullying is a bigger problem, suicides are a bigger problem.
Most kids who get bullied are embarrassed that they are being bullied and frequently don’t want to tell anyone they have been getting bullied.
Kids need to have someone they can talk to about the stressful things they encounter. When kids live in an environment where they have no one they can talk to because the people they live with are not easy to talk to for one reason or another; those kids are more likely to bottle-up their emotions and continue to feel worse. When kids aren’t able to have 2-way communications with anyone they are living with, they should try to find someone outside of their home who they can talk to.
Unfortunately, there are a lot of people in this world who try to dump all of their problems on other people. They blame other people for everything that goes wrong in their life. Those people tend to look for easy targets. They try to find people to dump-on that they think won’t fight back. People who are sensitive, introverted and/or shy are frequently the people who bullies find to dump-on.
People who are sensitive, introverted and/or shy, typically aren’t good at fighting back. Some people are naturally gentle. When gentle people have to interact with aggressive people; it, is very hard for the gentle person to defend themselves. Gentle people don’t want to hurt other people. They don’t want to scream at people, criticize people or fight people.
There is a small percentage of people in this world who do enjoy hurting other people. That is their goal. Hurting other people helps them feel better.
The gentle people need to become educated regarding what they should do when someone starts to bully them. They need to know who they should report the bully to. They need to feel comfortable with reporting the bully. Every young person should be handed a list of ways they can report a bully at the beginning of every school year. They can report the bullying to teachers. They can report the bullying to the principle or the nurse. They can report the bully to the local police. They can tell the police they don’t want the bully to know who reported them and the police won’t tell the bully who reported them.
Sometimes the victims of the bully don’t want to report the bully because they are worried the bullying will become worse if the bully learns the victim reported them.
Sometimes the bully is someone who has been living a very stressful life and they need to have someone they can talk to about all of the things they are frustrated about.
Most schools have Counselors the students can talk to. Bullies and victims of bullies should talk to the Counselor at their school if they need to talk to someone about the difficult issues they have been living with.
Also, people who know bullying is going on should try to help the victim. Sometimes the victim is not capable of protecting them self.
One of the things that happens when there is bullying happening at a school is that other students try to encourage the bully and the victim to fight. A lot of young kids want to watch people fight. Sometimes the other kids at the school want to see certain people get beat-up.
Bullying has become dramatically more common as technology has become more common.
Social media has caused our suicide rates to increase dramatically!!!!!!!!!!
Between 2001 and 2019, the suicide rate in the U.S. has climbed 33%. American’s are more than twice as likely to die from killing themselves than they are likely to die from someone else killing them.
Online bullying has been increasing dramatically since 2006. That is about the same time our suicide rated started increasing dramatically. Bullying is a bigger problem now than it has ever been before. Some people get bullied in person and online. Since it is easier for bullies to bully online than it is in person, bullies are doing more bullying now than they ever have before.
Homicides get a lot of attention. We read about homicides in the headlines in newspapers. Lots of news stories report homicides. Lots of television shows feature homicides, political figures talk about homicides, police stations have large budgets that are allocated for homicides. Suicides are rarely reported in newspapers or on the news. Very few television shows or movies discuss suicides. Police stations don’t have large budgets set-aside to investigate suicides.
I hardly ever hear anyone talk about suicides. Even when I have been doing research about suicides, I have found lots of articles and reports about how bad this problem is, but, nothing I have read has offered any solutions. It seems like no one has any idea what the remedy is.
I have some ideas that I think would be very helpful. I am planning to do radio interviews all over the United States to advertise my 2 books about bullying. It would be nice if my idea about BULLY BOXES and BULLY MANAGEMENT CLASSES could be implemented a lot sooner than that. I explain, in detail, in one of the chapters in my book, ‘Make the Bullies pay and help us lower our Suicide Rate’, about my idea for having BULLY BOXES being legally required to be placed in the bathrooms at all schools, churches, libraries and large corporations where people work so it would be easy for the people who are being bullied or victimized in some way, to report the bullies. These BULLY BOXES would be locked. They would be in a place where anyone could drop a note inside a secure box that would report who has been treating them badly and that they need help. The notes would be retrieved from all of the BULLY BOXES regularly, by authorized people only.
I have also listed lots of solutions to bullying in the final chapter of my book, ‘Make the Bullies Pay and help us lower our Suicide Rate’, but, I really think my ‘BULLY BOX’ idea could help decrease bullying dramatically and save a lot of lives.
Also, a report about how many suicides have occurred within the United States between the years 1981 and 2016 reported the following statistics:
1981 28,000 suicides
1986 31,000 suicides
1991 31,000 suicides
1996 31,000 suicides
2001 31,000 suicides
2006 33,000 suicides
2011 40,000 suicides
2016 45,000 suicides
2017 47,000 suicides
THE TOP 15 REASONS PEOPLE COMMIT SUICIDE ARE:
- Mental illness
- Traumatic experience
- Bullying
- Personality disorders
- Drug addiction / Substance abuse
- Eating disorders
- Unemployment
- Social Isolation / Loneliness
- Relationship problems
- Genetics / Family history
- Philosophical desire / Existential crisis
- Terminal illness
- Chronic pain
- Financial problems
- Prescription drugs
During 2016, the Top 10 leading causes of death made-up about 74% of all of the deaths that year. The Top 10 causes of death that year were:
- Heart Disease
- Cancer
- Unintentional injuries
- Chronic Lower Respiratory Complications
- Stroke
- Alzheimer’s Disease
- Diabetes
- Influenza and Pneumonia
- Kidney Disease
- Suicide
Some statistics on bullying and suicide are as follows:
It’s the 3rd leading cause of death among young people.
During 2016, it was the 2nd leading cause of death among people who were
between 15 and 34 years old.
During 2016 there were more than twice as many suicides as there were
homicides.
For every suicide among young people, there are at least 100 suicide attempts.
More than 14% of high school students have considered suicide.
Almost 7% have attempted it.
A study done in Britain revealed at least half of suicides among young people
are related to bullying.
10 to 14 year old girls are at an even higher risk for committing suicide.
ABC News reported about 30 percent of students are either bullies or victims
of bullies.
Some warning signs that may be a clue that a young person is considering suicide.
Acting depressed
Ongoing sadness
Withdrawal from others
Losing interest in their favorite activities
Trouble with sleeping
Trouble with eating
Talking about death or dying
Showing an interest in death or dying
Participating in dangerous activities
Substance abuse
Self-harm
Giving away favorite possessions, then, saying goodbye to people
Telling someone they can’t handle things anymore
Making comments that things would be better without them
Some ways to help someone who is considering suicide
If someone tells you they are considering suicide, take them seriously and get
them help immediately.
Keep weapons and medications away from them.
Parents should encourage their children to talk about bullying. Some of them
don’t want to admit they have been victims of bullying.
Parents should insist on having access to their children’s friends on social
network.
Parents should have open communication with their children about bullying.
Parents should ask their children if anyone has been bullying them through text
messages.
If parents see a serious bullying problem, they should talk to their school
authorities about it.
If the school authorities are not responding adequately, report the school
authorities to the people they report to.
Parents may also contact local Police or local Attorneys to get some help
regarding bullying.
Parents should care about their kids emotions. They should make sure they
aren’t so strict and rigid that they are making their children feel miserable all
of the time.
Parents should make sure they aren’t so uninterested in their children’s lives
that their children believe no one in the world really cares about them.
Within the United States, the 5 states that have the highest suicide rates are:
Montana…………………………….28.9 / 100,000
Alaska…………………………………27.0 / 100,000
Wyoming……………………………26.9 / 100,000
New Mexico……………………….23.3 / 100,000
Idaho………………………………….23.2 / 100,000
Within the United States, the 5 states that have the lowest suicide rates are:
New York……………………………08.1 / 100,000
New Jersey…………………………08.3 / 100,000
Massachusetts……………………09.5 / 100,000
Maryland……………………………09.8 / 100,000
Connecticut…………………..…..10.5 / 100,000
Overall, suicides are more common in rural areas than in areas where there is a dense population. Young people who live in rural areas are about twice as likely to kill themselves as young people who live in cities.
It is believed that suicides are more common in rural areas than in cities because:
It is believed that some of the reasons the states that have a high suicide rate tend to be states that have: easy access to firearms, excessive substance abuse, more mental illnesses, less access to mental health workers (psychologists and psychiatrists, for example) near them, who they can talk to and who can prescribe medicines for them, high unemployment rates, flailing economies and not many jobs available that pay people well enough to be able to live a decent life. Also, people who live in rural areas are frequently people who have smaller social networks and they try to be self-reliant. They are used to handling everything on their own and are uncomfortable with asking people for help.
It is believed that some of the reasons the states that have a low suicide rate tend to be the states that have easy access to medical services, reduced obesity, reduced smoking, economic stability and high funding for public healthcare.
Significantly more men commit suicide than women, at every age.
19.3% of all suicides come from men and women who are above the age of 85.
19.2% of all suicides come from men and women who are between 45 and 64.
11.6% of all suicides come from males and females who are teenagers.
In summary, about 50% of all suicides occur within the above age ranges.
The suicide rates among nationalities is:
14.7% White people
10.9% Native Americans
06.3% Hispanics
05.9% Asians and Pacific Islanders
05.5% Black Americans
The methods people use to commit suicide are:
49.9% Firearms
26.7% Suffocation
15.9% Poisoning
07.5% Other methods
According to a survey that was conducted by the Cyberbullying Research Center, (www.cyberbullying.org), during 2016, 5,707 students who lived within the United States were surveyed. The students were between the ages of 12 – 17 years old. The results from that survey reported that 33.8% of those students had been cyber-bullied at some time during their lifetime. The results from the rest of the survey were intended to measure how much each student had been cyber-bullied during the previous 30 days. Those results were:
16.9% Were cyber-bullied.
22.5% Had received mean or hurtful comments online.
20.1% False rumors about them had been posted online.
12.7% Mean names or comments with a sexual content were posted about
them online.
12.2% Someone threatened to hurt them online.
11.9% Threatened to hurt them through a cell phone text.
11.1% Mean or hurtful pictures were posted of them online.
10.3% Someone else pretended to be them online.
10.1% Mean names or comments about their race or color were posted online.
7.4% A mean or hurtful video of them was posted online.
7.1% Someone created a mean or hurtful web page about them online.
25.1% One or more of the above situations happened to them 2 or more times.
It is very obvious to me that laws need to be created and enforced, all over the world, that help protect people from being bullied. Also, everyone needs to be educated regarding how they can report the people who are bullying them.
Written by: Dawn Perucca
Author of: ‘Make the Bullies Pay’
Author of: ‘Make the Bullies Pay and help us lower our Suicide Rate’
Make the Bullies Pay 
Loved reading this! I just published my own bullying experience, love for some people to check it out!
LikeLike
Awesome post! And so heartbreaking because it’s so relatable!
LikeLiked by 1 person