Bullied into Suicide?

[Tully Mars]

Anyone else following Phoebe Prince case up in Ma?

Story here

I have a lot of questions-

Is it possible to be bullied into suicide? I remember older kids giving younger and or weaker kids a bad time, but to the point of someone offing themselves? Not at my school. Don't remember hearing or reading about it anywhere else either.

How bad has school gotten? I mean when I went to school I don't remember kids shooting up class rooms and or whole schools. Nor do I remember kids taking things to the extreme of people ending up dead.

Do you think this show a lack of something? Too much of something? Blame TV, the community, parents and school?


I'm just kind of lost.

[Cynthetiq]

Personally, this story not withstanding, but Americans in particular like to have a happy ending. We feel cheated when the story just ends, fade to black, no justice, no resolution, no tidy cleanup in the last 15 minutes of the 1 hour show. I'm always amazed at how fast it takes to find the murderer on CSI, what maybe a day or an afternoon?

We like the justice in the Accused because people felt that those cheering the rapist on were equally at to blame. We have good Samaritan laws to force people to get involved in cases where they alone should be able to decide to assist or not based on their ability and desire.

Back to this about the bullying, I think that bullying sucks, but I think that it also is an invaluable teacher as to how to deal with a number of things from self control to disconnecting one's self esteem from an external measurement.

[SecretMethod70]

The problem is that teens do not have the same capacity for reasonable judgement that adults do, and that goes for the bullies and the bullied. Teenage years should not be a time to take the phrase "what doesn't kill you makes you stronger" literally. This case seems particularly egregious, with statutory rape and physical assault involved, but I do think we also need to take into account the fact that the bullies also lack proper judgement. In cases where the suicide is brought on by the typical bullying of nasty rumors and other non-physical means, it's important to teach that actions have consequences, but it's also important not to ruin the bully's entire life for bad judgement as a teenager.

[Pearl Trade]

I think the girl was probably very weak minded and also that the bullies must have done some fucked stuff to her. She obviously didn't know how or couldn't deal with it. I bet she had some other issues going on besides the bullying. Such a shame, she'll never know it didn't have to be like that.

[Baraka_Guru]

The thing to bear in mind about suicide is that it's often connected to depression or some other state of distress. The act of suicide isn't necessarily a rational one, which is why intervention is usually preferred.

In terms of bullying and suicide, the bullying can be viewed as an acute stressor triggering or otherwise exacerbating a preexisting depressive or stressed state.

Sure there can be some life lessons taken away from situations such as bullying, but when it comes down to the cases where suicide is the outcome, there might have been more at play than is usual in most cases.

[SecretMethod70]

And let's not forget about the opportunity to take something tragic like the resulting suicide and turn it into a life lesson for the bullies. As much as people who are bullied can learn life lessons from the bullying, the bullies can also learn life lessons when their actions contribute to such negative outcomes. Those lessons aren't going to be learned if we act like the bullies did nothing wrong.

[Ourcrazymodern?]

I don't understand the strange variety of charges. The poor girl's reasons, she can no longer speak of. The world has changed, so the bullies get some help. Evolution prevails.