On this week’s show, we’re going to take a serious look at bullying and how we may be able to prevent it.

We first talk with Melissa Holt, who is an associate professor in counseling psychology at the Wheelock College of Education & Human Development at Boston University. She has been studying bullying for close to two decades and has revealed that it is far more complex than we might believe. We hear about what fosters bullying and victimization and how a bully-victim relationship can become part of society.

We continue our discussion to explore the effects of bullying on the victim and learn that the effects can be long lasting and may hinder a person’s success as they age. We also touch on the topic of suicide and hear that the victim may indeed idealize this route but in many cases, so might the bully who may have been a victim of some other type of maltreatment.  

In our SASS Class, we look at how bullying can be prevented with Lisa Wexler, a professor of social work at Michigan University. She has developed social interventions such as toolkit to be able to help at-risk children find positivity in their lives at all ages of development. As we hear her work has not only proven to help individual children, it has also shown to benefit entire communities.   

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Twitter: @JATetroEmail: [email protected]

Guests:

Melissa HoltWeb: https://www.bu.edu/wheelock/profile/melissa-k-holt/ Lisa WexlerWeb: https://ssw.umich.edu/faculty/profiles/clinical-and-research/lwexler  

For more information on bullying:

Bullying Canada: https://bullyingcanada.ca

Promoting Relationships and Eliminating Violence Network (PREVnet): https://www.prevnet.ca

Crisis Text Line: https://www.crisistextline.ca/

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