School Bullying

School bullying is a type of that occurs in any .

For an act to be considered bullying it must meet certain criteria. This includes hostile intent, imbalance of power, repetition, distress, and provocation. Bullying can have a wide spectrum of effects on a student including anger, depression, stress and suicide. Additionally, the bully can develop different social disorders or have a higher chance of engaging in criminal activity.

If there is suspicion that a child is being bullied or is a bully, there are warning signs in their behavior.There is no universal definition of school bullying; however, it is widely agreed that bullying is a subcategory of characterized by the following three minimum criteria:  hostile intent (i.e., the harm caused by bullying is deliberate, not accidental), imbalance of power (i.e., bullying includes a real or perceived power inequity  between the bully and the victim), and repetition over a period of time (i.e., more than once with the potential to occur  multiple times).

The following two additional criteria have been proposed to complement the above-mentioned criteria:

        -victim distress (victim suffers mild to severe psychological, social or physical trauma) and

        -provocation (bullying is motivated by perceived benefits of their aggressive behaviors).

Some of these characteristics have been disputed (e.g., for power imbalance: bullies and victims often report that conflicts occur between two equals); nevertheless, they remain widely established in the scientific literature.