Impact of Bullying on Adolescents Unraveling The Mindset of Bullying Victims

INTRODUCTION Bullying is an act of repeated aggressive behavior with an intention to hurt another person, physically or mentally. It is generally defined as repeated negative actions (i.e., physical, verbal, and/or psychological) directed at a targeted over time, where there is a power differential (either real or perceived) between the target and the bully or bullies (Olweus, 1993; Olweus, Limber & Mihalic, 1999). Bullying is very common in India as like in many other countries (Venugopal, 2008). A study by IMRB & Parent circle has revealed that every third child is facing bullying in school (Aiyyar, 2015). The prevalence of the school bullying among Indian children was studied by Kshirsagar, Agarwal, and Bavdekar (2007) in which they found that bullying was reported by 31.4% of the children. In India, School bullying, Workplace bullying and Cyber bullying are very common. Bullying classmates, juniors or even seniors in the school is a common culture amongst school students in India. School bullying is on the rise, and it concerns all the stakeholders (Sullivan, Cleary & Sullivan, 2005). In India, there are many cases of school bullying (Kaushik, 2019). From the ages, Bullying has been considered as a normal growing process and a way of socialization both by the family and school environment. As students tease and annoy their classmates in school and take it as a source of being social and familiar with them. Thus, it can be concluded that bullying has rooted in school (Artinopoulou, 2001). Bullying involves three parties namely, bully; victim (and it includes bully victim as well) and bystanders. However, in the present research the perspective of bystanders have not been used, as if we have included all the three parties then the study would become very extensive, therefore, we have used only bully and victim perspective in this study. Bullying has both short term and long term impact on victims, bullies, bully-victimsand bystanders. It interferes with their growth and development of the self and the formation of healthy relationships. Its consequences are largely negative and lifelong. It causes invisible hurt in the form of emotional damage. It affects their,