Self-harm is not just attention-seeking: it’s time to talk openly about the issue

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attention-seeking, Bullying, causes, emotional distress, emotional pain, emotions, isolation, obsessions, pain, physical pain, professional help, relief, secret, self-harm, stress, teenagers, young people

Self-harm is not just attention-seeking: it’s time to talk openly about the issue

Three years ago, with her parents and sisters out for dinner, then-13-year-old Lucy found herself alone in her family’s Lincolnshire home. Dressed in her pink Tinker Bell pyjamas, she began to make herself a cup of tea. Then she spotted an object on the kitchen counter that immediately diverted her attention. “Shall I do it?” Lucy asked herself. “Will it stop the pain?”

For Lucy, now 17, that evening marked the start of a two-and-a-half year struggle with self-harm. Two weeks before, she had been brutally attacked and raped (which she now describes as “the incident”). At the time, anxious they wouldn’t believe her, Lucy never fully revealed to anyone what had happened. In her mind, she tried to repress the rape. She began shutting herself in her bedroom. She told her parents she was feeling unwell. Physical pain, she decided, was the only way to purge her pent-up emotional pain.

“When you keep all your problems in, it feels like you’re screaming inside,” Lucy says. “But when you cut or burn yourself, the pain is more physical. You feel like you’re releasing that scream. After a few months, self-harming became part of my daily routine.”

Eventually, both at school or at home, Lucy was self-harming four times a day. She wore black jeans, black tops and even black gloves to conceal her scars. “I pushed everyone everyone away” Lucy says. “I stopped caring about school. My grades suffered. Self-harm became a real obsession. It took over my life.”

Today, having made a huge effort to stop, Lucy has not self-harmed for more than six months. But self-harm is still on the rise among the UK’s young population. Data published last year by a collaborate study from England Health Behaviour in School Aged Children (HBSC) revealed that up to one in five 15-year-olds across the country self-harm. During the past decade, according to the same study, there has been a three-fold increase in the total number of UK teenagers self-harming.

What drives young people to self-harm? Therapist Jenna Mutlick, who has a personal experience of it, says it is usually some form of “self-punishment”. People believe they have done something wrong – even when they haven’t – and then feel they deserve the pain. “I know a few people who self-harm because they are bullied and eventually come to believe that they then deserve to be bullied,” she says. “When you self-harm, it is so hard to escape from the [mental] space that you are in.”

“It’s a very heterogeneous group of people who self-harm, and there are a variety of reasons why people might start,” says Professor Glyn Lewis, head of psychiatry at University College London. “Clearly, there are people who self-harm because they want to take their own lives, but there are also people who want to self-harm because they are in difficult situations or want to relieve stress.

“As a long-term strategy, of course, self-harm is not very effective,” he adds, “but people do report that they get some form of relief from upsetting thoughts or emotions. Some forms of self-harm are obviously very dangerous, but there’s a continuum. Some people may only scratch themselves very superficially, for example, which won’t do any long-lasting damage.”

The causes of self-harm are likely to be complex, even if the person harming does not see the issues in that way. Kieran, from Glasgow, began self-harming after five years of “constant” physical and verbal bullying at school. His parents split up when he was seven, though he says it was the bullying – which still torments him today – that incited his self-harming. “The bullying made me feel really unbalanced,” says Kieran, now 23. “I started to self-harm when I was aged 11, and it kind of just snowballed from there. I stopped eating. I isolated myself from a lot of my friends and family. I kept it a secret for almost a decade.”

Like Lucy, Kieran says that self-harming became a secret obsession. The bullying made him feel “physically and mentally numb”. Self-harm, by contrast, made Kieran feel more alive, and he would regularly self-harm in his bedroom at night. “It brought me out of my slumber,” he says. “It made me feel normal, and I became addicted to doing it for that reason.” He says that the self-harm was like an “adrenaline shot” that brings everything back into focus.”

Kieran admits that he still has a “daily battle” with self-harm. He is significantly better than he was a few years ago, though, when he would harm himself up to 400 times in one evening. “It’s a high level of emotional distress that causes people to resort to self-harming,” he says. “People sometimes feel like they can’t cope with their emotion. It’s how they cope with life’s daily stresses.”

Chris Leaman, from the UK mental health charity YoungMinds, says it is still very much a taboo subject in British society. “Every year, we work with Childline, YouthNet and selfharmUK to try and combat these sort of stigmas for Self-Harm Awareness Day,” he says. “There is a definite problem around young men not feeling like they can talk about their issues, which can make self-harm quite a common issue among them.”

“Some people do talk about self-harm quite openly, but that’s relatively unusual,” says Professor Glyn Lewis. “A lot of people conceal self-harming behaviour from their friends and family. There are not necessarily signs to look out for; it’s more a case of often asking people how they are feeling, and keeping communication open with them. As a rule, families and friends concerned about someone self-harming always should talk to the person themselves and encourage them to seek professional help.”

Statistically, teenage girls are still more than twice as likely to self-harm than young males, and this has helped create another gender-based stigma: that self-harming girls are simply seeking attention. Fiona Brooks, professor of adolescent and child health at the University of Hertfordshire, who led the investigations for last year’s HBSC report, identifies this as a prevalent problem. “Nowadays, young people are in a much more uncertain world than before,” she says. “Instead of self-harming just being dismissed as attention seeking, it’s something that needs to be taken seriously. Equally, if young girls are self-harming for attention, that’s a different matter that needs to be taken just as seriously.”

Lucy thinks back on that evening she started self-harming, and wishes that she could tell herself to stop – and talk to someone. Talking, like with most former self-harmers, has been a significant part of Lucy’s recovery, but she also credits her own determination as a decisive factor. “If you don’t want to stop, you won’t,” she says. “In the end, a lot of it comes down to how you see yourself. I used to feel people were always judging me, but now I feel I don’t care what they think. Why should I let them control my happiness?”

Why should teachers talk about mental health with students and colleagues?

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anxiety, Bullying, career, colleagues, Depression, harassment, management, mental health issues, recovery, secret, stigma, stress, support, teachers

Why should teachers talk about mental health with students and colleagues?

Clare can now talk with calm reflection about the moment she decided to end her life. She remembers feeling as if she were living in a sort of twilight zone where nothing made sense: she was being shunned by colleagues and faced losing her job as a teacher.

Things had spiralled out of control after Clare was signed off work with stress-related depression. When invited back to school to talk about when she might return, managers tried to renegotiate her contract. Clare immediately sought legal advice. “I felt isolated, bullied and harassed.

“My managers were asking other staff members about me and I was becoming increasingly anxious by what was happening. Instead of supporting me and making reasonable adjustments to the fact that I was off with stress, the school’s response was completely punitive.”

Part of the problem is that mental illness in teaching is stigmatised, says Clare. “If you reveal that you are stressed, it is seen as a great weakness – that you are just not up to the job.”

Figures published by the Association of Teachers and Lecturers (ATL) this year showed that more than a third of school and college staff have noticed a rise in mental health issues among colleagues in the past two years. Despite this, 68% kept their problems a secret from their bosses.

In a recent Teacher Support Network survey, the majority of teachers (89%) blamed excessive workloads for their mental health problems, and 40% wouldn’t talk to anyone at work about mental illness because was seen as “a sign of weakness”.

People worry about being seen as not good enough, says Tim, a teacher who retired early due to stress and anxiety. “If you are suffering from work-related stress you are especially reluctant to seek the support of senior management for fear that your complaints could be seen as an indictment of their management.”

David Ambler, ATL district secretary in Birmingham, says mental health problems are also stigmatised because of worries about how this will make a school look. “To reduce the stigmatisation of mental illness requires more than simply a change of attitude among headteachers and senior management in school. It requires a change of attitude among the general public and parents to understand that teaching is a stressful job and sometimes teachers go under or need treatment.”

When Michael was signed off with stress-related depression, he found that some colleagues were understanding but others were not. Teachers worry about the impact of admitting to a mental health problem on their career, he says. The headteacher who employed Michael in his current post said that she was taking a huge risk and put him on a six-month trial period. “Employers are not as sure about mental illness as they would be about physical illness,” he says. “If I broke my leg, for example, and came back to work I don’t think I would be trialled in the same way.”

But this needn’t be the case if the stigma around the issue of mental illness is tackled and the right support is put in place. Rachel, who has experienced depression for years but hasn’t taken time off work, puts her ability to keep teaching without taking any extensive leave down to the support of her senior leadership team and colleagues.

“I am able to talk to all my senior management team and have good friends on the staff who also know and are supportive. My experience of mental health, if anything, has done the opposite of holding me back. But if I had not received the understanding and support I did then I would almost certainly have ended up off sick and probably left teaching.”

Nor is this just an issue of doing the right thing and supporting people experiencing mental health problems – it’s also essential to their recovery. Alison Stark, a senior teacher at a Dutch secondary school, who is off sick with work-related burnout, says there is a more open culture to mental health in the Netherlands.

“The first step is admitting that you have a problem. I talked about my problems with a friend and just being able to say out loud that I am struggling helped me accept things,” she says.

Her school has been patient and supportive – rather than worrying about what to say, colleagues have sent her cards, flowers and message of support. “It is important that schools have a supportive management who are understanding. Headteachers need to support management and create an atmosphere in which teachers can talk about it [mental illness].”

For Stark, the most supportive person has been her deputy head, who has sought solutions by asking her what she needs and what would aid her recovery. “They say, ‘do you want me to allow you home access to email or not? Should I block it and protect you?’”

An openness about mental illness could also help students by ensuring they have positive role models. Kelly, who just started in a girls’ school, is recovering from an eating disorder and used to self-harm. She says stress from teaching can cause a flare-up in food-control behaviours and she has visible scars on her arm. “I am what you could call a normal weight so it’s not obvious I struggled with bulimia, anorexia and excessive exercising,” she says.

Kelly wants to share her experiences to show her pupils that no one should let mental health problems define them, but she worries about the repercussions. “I worry that my school would not be supportive of my talking about my experiences as they would be concerned about the potential backlash from parents. If students mis-reported the story at home some parents may be concerned about my capacity to cope.”

• Most of the names in this article have been changed to protect the teachers who shared their stories.

The Tackling mental health stigma in schools series is funded by Time to Change. All content is editorially independent except for pieces labelled advertisement feature. Find out more here.

More than half of bullied children become depressed as adults, survey shows

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'character-building', Bullying, Children, Cyberbullying, Depression, rite of passage, self-harm, suicidal

More than half of bullied children become depressed as adults, survey shows

55 per cent of children who have been bullied develop depression – with more than one in three becoming suicidal or self-harming as a result, according to a Europe-wide poll released today.

Yet despite the scale of suffering, one in three adults view bullying as a routine rite of passage, and 16 per cent describe it as “character-building”.

The shocking statistics have provoked calls for urgent action, with more than 100,000 people joining a campaign by the BeatBullying charity calling on the European Commission to introduce new laws to protect children from bullying and cyberbullying.

This comes after an inquest in May heard how a British teenager walked into the sea to drown after suffering cyberbullying over Facebook.

Callum Moody-Chapman, 17, from Cumbria, had been sent online threats by a former friend who was going out with his ex-girlfriend. The 17-year-old boy threatened to beat him, set fire to his home and encourage friends “to stamp on your head”. A verdict of suicide into the youngster’s death last December was recorded by the coroner, who cited the abusive messages as “by far the most significant aspect of this case”.

Attitudes need to change if such tragedies are to be prevented, according to campaigners.

Emma-Jane Cross, chief executive of BeatBullying, said: “Far too many European citizens still see bullying as ‘part of growing up’ and don’t take it seriously. This is pushing young people to the brink with some even resorting to harming themselves in order to cope.”

She added: “How many more children have to tragically lose their lives before these outdated perceptions change? Today more than 100,000 children, families, schools and charitable organisations are sending the European Commission a clear message that enough is enough. We urge them to listen.”

And Sarah Crown, editor of Mumsnet, one of the organisations backing the protest, commented: “These figures demonstrate once again why bullying ought not to be treated as ‘part and parcel’ of growing up. It’s a serious matter that can result in severe consequences for the victim.”

Little Mix, Amanda Holden, JLS singer Aston Merrygold, and reality TV star Jamie Laing from Made in Chelsea are among the names supporting the campaign. Leigh Anne of Little Mix said: “Myself and the girls have all experienced being bullied at some point in our life, when we see on Twitter that some of our fans are going through it now we find it so upsetting, and that’s the reason we feel so passionate about this campaign.”

And the effects on victims can be long-lasting. For childhood bullying can continue to damage mental and physical health for decades afterwards, causing higher rates of depression, ill health and unemployment in adult life, according to a study by researchers from Kings College London published earlier this year.

Self-harm sites and cyberbullying: the threat to children from web’s dark side

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Bullying, Depression, mental health issues, self-harm, social networks, suicide, teenagers, young people

Self-harm sites and cyberbullying: the threat to children from web’s dark side

“Some of the images do scare me, especially if it’s my friends. Once my friend cut lines down the side of his face as a ‘Chelsea Smile’, he put it online and it was the worst thing I had ever seen. He’s my friend, I don’t want to see him that upset. He got so much hate for it and ended up going into hibernation, nobody heard from him for over a week and we honestly thought he had killed himself.”

Frankie* is 15 and lives in the Midlands. For the past year or so she has updated her Tumblr blog most days. On other social networks she uses her real name, but on Tumblr – a blogging platform – she shares her darkest thoughts about depression, anxiety and self-harm anonymously. “The other day I put up a self-harm picture,” she says. “I was alone and in a dark place. […] Of course, nobody would help, but posting it boosted my confidence a little; finding it buried in amongst all the other self-harm posts reminded me I’m not alone.”

Fears about self-harm sites have been growing since the suicides of two teenagers who, it emerged, were obsessed with self-harm and depression blogs, with mental health campaigners and experts warning that the UK’s teens are at risk of becoming a lost generation if parents and adults cannot reach out to them across the digital divide.

Tallulah Wilson, a 15-year-old who killed herself in 2012, was caught up in a “toxic digital world”, according to her mother, while the parents of Sasha Steadman, a 16-year-old who died from a suspected drug overdose in January after looking at self-harm sites, said her “impressionable mind” had been filled “with their damning gospel of darkness”.

For the uninitiated, self-harm blogs present a surreal world of fantasy and pain. Countless sites dedicated to self-harm and depression are filled with images of bleeding wounds juxtaposed with pixelated gifs, flickering eerily with snippets of Hollywood angst. Helen, who is now 18, visited them regularly, before stopping to help herself move on from self-harming. “You have people asking you how to cut yourself deep enough because their therapist said it wasn’t bad enough,” she says. “I have had people tell me to kill myself. I think the most traumatic is when you find someone’s suicide note online and there is no way to actually get in contact with the person.”

Isolated and lonely, she used the blogs because they gave her a sense of belonging. “You want to find people who are similar to you. That is what humans do,” she says. “It starts off as trying to help, but then it becomes competitive and dangerous. You get sucked into this world of who can cut the deepest/be the skinniest and avoid notice by the outside world. You end up spending hours a day searching these sites for reassurance, but it just makes it harder.”

Keeping children safe online is the “child protection challenge of this generation”, according to Peter Wanless, head of the NSPCC. ChildLine, part of the organisation, registered an 87% rise in calls about cyberbullying last year, a 41% increase in calls about self-harm, and a 33% increase in calls about suicide, with the biggest increase among 12- to 15-year-olds.

While the internet provides unprecedented opportunities for young people to communicate and learn, it can be a dangerous place for vulnerable teenagers, says Sue Minto, the head of ChildLine. “Children are communicating in a way we have never seen before – all the time and instantly,” she says. “Personally, I think this kind of relentless exposure is the biggest challenge we have ever faced.”

Minto notes that while peer pressure and bullying have been around for a long time, the ability to be contacted at all times is new. The cloak of anonymity can lead children to make comments they would shy away from in “real” life, she says. “The pressure on children is immense and very worrying – there is no break for these young people, it is quite relentless. Children who are being bullied tell us there is no point in turning off their phone, because the messages will just be there waiting for them.”

A recent survey carried out by youth charities ChildLine, Selfharm.co.uk,YouthNet and YoungMinds revealed that 61% of the 4,000 young people who responded said they self harmed because they felt alone, while 25% cited bullying. Almost 40% said they had never spoken to anyone in the “real world” about it.

Rachel Welch, director of Selfharm.co.uk, which supports young people affected by self-harm, says there is a huge gap between what adults see of the online world and their children’s experience. “So many young people are drifting into a world where they are completely disconnected,” she says.

But how dangerous are self-harm sites? Do they simply show teenage angst and creative expression, or highlight a worrying deterioration of teenage mental health?

Mary Hassell, the coroner presiding over the inquest of Tallulah Wilson, was concerned enough to write to Jeremy Hunt, the health secretary, to warn him of a risk of future deaths without a greater understanding of children’s online worlds. Although Tallulah was treated by healthcare professionals, they didn’t have “a good enough understanding of the evolving way that the internet is used by young people, most particularly in terms of the online life that is quite separate from the rest of life”, she wrote.

A study into possible links between suicide and the internet has just been commissioned by the Department of Health and will report in two and a half years: a department spokeswoman said children’s mental health was a priority for the government and pointed to the introduction of “family-friendly filters” and internet safety into the national curriculum.

But for Sarah Brennan, chief executive of the youth mental health charity Young Minds, the real issue is ignorance of the scale of the problem, or even denial that the problem exists. The current NHS commissioning of youth mental health services is based on data collected in 2004 – the year Facebook launched.

“It is shocking that the government is allowing NHS commissioners to plan services based on out of date and inaccurate data,” Brennan says, adding that a Young Minds freedom of information request recently revealed that 34 out of 51 local authorities in England have reduced the budget for their children and adolescent mental health services since 2010, while a Community Care/BBC investigation this week showed that a growing number of seriously ill children are being admitted to adult psychiatric wards or sent hundreds of miles from home for hospital care.

“We are sitting on a ticking time bomb here,” says Brennan. “At the same time that we are seeing an increase in need, youth mental health services are being cut. There is an explosion of bullying online and young people struggling to cope with mental health issues, anxiety, eating disorders. If we don’t do something about it we could have a lost generation.”

What can be done? Since Tallulah Wilson’s suicide, Tumblr has introduced a warning that pops up when users search for terms related to self-harm, directing them towards sites offering support and calling on users to report blogs with “inappropriate content” so they can be taken down. A Tumblr spokeswoman said the site was “deeply committed to protecting our users’ freedom of expression”, but that it draws lines “around a few categories of content we consider damaging to our community, including blogs that encourage self-harm”.

And while there have been calls to shut down certain sites, such as Ask.fm – which allows users to ask anonymous questions and has been linked to teen suicides – teenagers and professionals spoken to by the Guardian agreed that simply banning sites or “dangerous” search terms was futile. Regulation can also backfire – recent efforts to impose opt-out “objectionable content filters”, backed by the prime minister, have resulted in sites such as ChildLine and Refuge also being blocked.

“We cannot put our head in the sand, simply blame these sites or hope to regulate our way out of this,” says Minto. “We are playing catch-up, but we need to take responsibility. You wouldn’t let your child cross the road without talking to them about road safety and the same goes for the risks of the internet – if we don’t tackle this it’s like opening the door and letting them walk through this cyberworld completely unequipped.”

Welch at Selfharm.co.uk agrees: “Calling for any type of ban is just missing the point. What we have to do is make sure our young people are emotionally resilient, emotionally aware and they know where to go to get help if they need it.”

Others say that while parts of the internet can be dangerous for vulnerable children, it can also provide the means to keep others safe and let them talk about their problems. As many young people contact ChildLine online as call its helpline. Online friends can be a force for good.

Samantha, a 17-year-old who started self-harming when she was 14, says her Tumblr site helped her recover from depression. “I felt like I belonged somewhere, they understood me in a way I felt I had never been understood before,” she says. At one point, she was off school with depression and spent all day online, answering 10-15 messages from other troubled teenagers every day. Now she “has a life” again and is online less frequently. “I’ve been told that I’ve saved lives and it made me feel good about myself that I was helping other people,” she says. “It’s really odd – but it works for me.”

Frankie, who is still working towards recovery, has mixed emotions. While she recognises that some blogs might encourage self-harmers, or make them feel worse, she still believes they can help. “I think for [people] like myself it can be reassuring just to know there are others out there that do it too [but] what scares me is thinking how many there are, how they are all posting it online, are they all cries for help? If that many people are crying for help then something needs to be done, and fast.”

*Names of young people have been changed. If you face any of the issues in this piece, you can call ChildLine on 0800 1111

When the Bully Is a Sibling

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abuse, aggression, anxiety, Bullying, Children, Depression, family, Self-esteem, siblings, young people

When the Bully Is a Sibling

Siblings have been bickering and trading blows since the time of Cain and Abel. But the torment and fighting that is often shrugged off as normal sibling rivalry may not always be so benign.

New research suggests that even when there are no physical scars, aggression between siblings can inflict psychological wounds as damaging as the anguish caused by bullies at school or on the playground. The findings offer an unusual look at an area of family life that has rarely been studied, in part because infighting among brothers and sisters is widely considered a harmless rite of passage.

But ordinary skirmishes over the remote or joystick are one thing, experts say, and chronic physical and verbal abuse, particularly when it is directed at one sibling, is another. The new study, which involved thousands of children and adolescents around the country, found that those who were attacked, threatened or intimidated by a sibling had increased levels of depression, anger and anxiety.

Corinna Jenkins Tucker, the lead author of the study, which was published in the journal Pediatrics, said that behaviors among siblings that cross the line into abuse deserve more recognition.

“Historically, the general thinking has been that it’s not a big deal, and sometimes it’s even viewed as being a good thing,” said Dr. Tucker, an associate professor of family studies at the University of New Hampshire. “There appears to be different norms of acceptability. Peer aggression is unacceptable, but it’s not the same for siblings.”

Dr. Tucker said that the growing number of programs and public service announcements aimed at stopping bullying and violence in schools and other settings should include a focus on sibling relationships as well.

“The aggression among siblings should be taken just as seriously as that among peers,” she said.

While normal rivalries with siblings can encourage healthy competition, the line between healthy relations and abuse is crossed when one child is consistently the victim of another and the aggression is intended to cause harm and humiliation, said John V. Caffaro, a clinical psychologist and the author of “Sibling Abuse Trauma.” Parents who fail to intervene, play favorites or give their children labels that sow divisions — like “the smart one” and “the athlete” — can inadvertently encourage conflict.

Nationwide, sibling violence is by far the most common form of family violence, occurring four to five times as frequently as spousal or parental child abuse, Dr. Caffaro said. According to some studies, nearly half of all children have been punched, kicked or bitten by a sibling, and roughly 15 percent have been repeatedly attacked. But even the most severe incidents are underreported because families are loath to acknowledge them, dismissing slaps and punches as horseplay and bullying as boys just being boys, he said.

“Our society tends to minimize child-on-child violence in general,” he added. “We have these ideas that if you’re hurt by a child it’s less injurious than if you’re hurt by an adult, but the data don’t support that.”

In the new report, Dr. Tucker and her colleagues studied 3,600 children using data from the National Survey of Children’s Exposure to Violence, which collects information on children and teenagers under 17. Previous studies of sibling violence, which are few in number, have typically been small or narrowly focused on specific forms of aggression.

But the new research, conducted through interviews with children and their parents, measured the impact of a broad range of violence. It looked at physical assaults with and without weapons and the destruction or stealing of property, as well as threats, name-calling and other forms of psychological intimidation.

The researchers also measured the same types of behaviors perpetrated by peers outside the home and accounted for them in their findings in order to tease apart the specific toll of sibling violence.

Over all, a third of the children in the study reported being victimized by a brother or sister in the previous year, and their scores were higher on measures of anxiety, depression and anger.

Catherine Bradshaw, an expert on bullying and the deputy director of the Center for the Prevention of Youth Violence at Johns Hopkins University, said the study was impressive in its scope and scale, and noted that it showed that all types of sibling aggression, from mild to severe, were associated with worse mental health.

“Parents at times might be thinking that their kids can fight it out or that a little bit of victimization might not be so bad,” she said. “But these findings suggest that the threshold is pretty low. It’s not just the rough stuff you have to keep an eye out for.”

Dr. Caffaro said that the effects of sibling abuse often continue into adulthood. Over the years he has treated patients who struggled with emotional issues and sabotaged themselves in their careers because of repeated humiliation they experienced at the hands of a brother or sister.

“It can erode their sense of identity and their self-esteem,” he said.

Britons show Victorian attitudes to epilepsy as children who suffer from the condition are accused of being ‘possessed’

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Bullying, Children, discrimination, epilepsy, friends, possession, prejudice, seizure, teachers

Britons show Victorian attitudes to epilepsy as children who suffer from the condition are accused of being ‘possessed’

One in five children who suffer with epilepsy has been accused of being “possessed” after having a seizure, according to shocking new research.

Britons’ Victorian attitudes to the condition are exposed in a report published by the charity Young Epilepsy.

It finds that over three quarters of people of all ages have experienced discrimination as a result of their epilepsy. More than 40 per cent of children have experienced discrimination or exclusion from their peers, and almost a third have faced discrimination from teachers.

In addition, two fifths have faced discrimination from strangers, and 8 per cent by doctors and medical professionals, according to polling for Young Epilepsy by Opinion Matters.

Negative reactions from others after a child suffers a seizure include being told being told that epilepsy is contagious, which happened to a third of affected children, and being asked if they could speak to spirits, which occurred to 18 per cent.

David Ford, chief executive of Young Epilepsy, said: “It’s a level of prejudice more akin to 1913 than 2013. We knew there was some discrimination but we had no idea it was on this scale.”

Conservative MP Laura Sandys said: “I’m epileptic and I know from personal experience that this is what people think.

“There’s been a sea-change in people’s perceptions of most disabilities, but epilepsy still seems to be seen as something you keep quiet about; it still hasn’t shaken off that perception that you’re somehow possessed by the devil or demonised.”

Ms Sandys, who is chair of the All-Party-Parliamentary Group on Epilepsy, said: “There have only been two MPs who have declared their epilepsy, but statistically there should be another four.”

Experts are concerned that this prejudice means that children with epilepsy are less inclined to be open and discuss their condition, something which could have serious health implications.

This guardedness continues into later life, with 55 per cent of those adults who were questioned in the survey saying that they never disclose their epilepsy to new people because they fear a negative reaction from them.

Professor Helen Cross, Prince of Wales chair of childhood epilepsy at University College London and Great Ormond Street Hospital, said: “These high levels of prejudice have a huge impact on how children can manage their condition. If you’re worried about being bullied then you don’t want to talk to people about it, which means you don’t have buddies who know what to do if you have a seizure.”

She added: “Epilepsy is as common as diabetes, and in childhood it’s more common, but while I bet every schoolchild can name someone they know with diabetes, I’m sure that’s not the case with epilepsy.”

Case study: Elliot Harden, 11

Julie Harden from Oxted, Surrey, is mother of Elliot, 11, who suffers from a life threatening form of complex epilepsy

“Some people are really quite nasty about epilepsy. In conversations Elliot has been called ‘a retard’, ‘mad’, ‘not right’ and ‘that scary boy’. Even coming into my house people jump back from him as if they’re worried they’re going to be attacked.

I’ve got friends who won’t come round to our house with their children because they’re scared of what they might see. One time my other son Cameron, who is 8, was playing with other children upstairs. Elliot came up to see them and the other children ran away downstairs.

One of my neighbours even bangs on the wall saying ‘f-ing this and that’ when Elliot is having a seizure and fighting for his life. Another neighbour ran out of the house when he had a seizure.

Thousands Of Children At Risk Of Sexual Abuse Claims NSPCC

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Bullying, Children, missing persons, risk, sexual abuse, sexual exploitation, Teens

Thousands Of Children At Risk Of Sexual Abuse Claims NSPCC

Thousands of children repeatedly went missing from care homes last year, leaving them at risk of sexual abuse, a leading charity has said.

The NSPCC revealed that 7,885 teenagers and children vanished from care in England and Wales last year, with at least 2,959 going missing more than once, some 35 times.

Around 40% of the youngsters were aged 13 to 17, but some were as young as six.

Tom Rahilly from the charity said: “The state needs to be a parent for these children. If any other child went missing their parents would move heaven and earth to find them and to understand why they did it. It should be no different for young people in care.

“Repeatedly going missing should be a big warning sign as this kind of behaviour can put them at serious risk of harm such as grooming or sexual exploitation. But we have to understand why they are doing it.

“Children go missing for many reasons – they’re being bullied, they’ve been put in a home miles from their family and they miss them and their friends, or they just don’t trust staff enough to tell them where they are.

“Many will have been abused before being placed in care and they need a lot of attention and protection. Going missing for just an hour or two can be long enough for them to come to harm.”

The charity is calling for repeatedly going missing from care to be fully acknowledged as sign that a child is at greater risk of harm.

It also wants care staff to make sure that they listen to children about why they have gone missing rather than simply punishing them, and to work with police to stop children going missing and to return them to safety as quickly as possible.

The NSPCC made a Freedom of Information request to all the police forces in England and Wales to obtain the figures, and 29 out of 43 responded in full.

However the charity said that it is estimated that less than half of all missing cases of this kind are reported to police.

Figures from the Department of Education also differ drastically to those supplied by police, putting the number of missing children at fewer than 1,000, the NSPCC said.

Last month concerns were raised by children’s charities about changes to the way that police deal with missing people.

The plans could see the number of cases where officers are called out drop by a third.

Call handlers will class cases as either “absent”, when a person fails to arrive somewhere they are expected, or the more serious as “missing”, where there is a specific reason for concern.

Police deal with around 327,000 reports of missing people each year, the equivalent of around 900 a day, two-thirds of which involve children.

There is often a link between a child frequently going missing and falling prey to sexual abuse.

The NSPCC warned that the changes could put children at risk of being sexually exploited, while the Children’s Society claimed that pilots carried out were too short to prove the plans were safe.

A Department for Education spokesman said: “We welcome the NSPCC’s findings. It is simply unacceptable that some residential care homes do not respond immediately when young people go missing. That is why we are taking immediate action to reform the system, so all homes are safe and secure places where vulnerable children can get the support they need.

“We have already changed the rules so that Ofsted can share the names and addresses of care homes with the police to better protect children who go missing. For the first time, we will also begin collecting national data on all children who run away, not just those missing for 24 hours.

“Decisions about whether to place children at a significant distance from their local community will be taken at a much more senior level as a result of a new duty on local authorities.

“Additionally a new regulation will mean children’s homes should not be open in areas that are unsafe, and children’s home providers will be required to work with the police and LA to consider the risks. We are also taking steps to improve the skills of care home workers so they are better able to identify risks and take action before children run away.”

Chief Constable Pat Geenty from the Association of Chief Police Officers said: “We know that regularly going missing from home can be a warning sign of child sexual exploitation.

“It can also signify that children and young people may be at risk of other forms of abuse, becoming a victim of crime or involved in criminal activity.

“This is why we have acted to improve our response to risk assessing and responding to missing person cases.”

Cyber bullying: ‘He told me he was a footballer. I wasn’t to know I was a victim

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Bullying, Children, Cyberbullying, Depression, mental health issues, risks, self-harm, sexual bullying, social networks, suicidal, young people

Cyber bullying: ‘He told me he was a footballer. I wasn’t to know I was a victim

When 15-year-old schoolgirl Lain Lerouge was contacted through Facebook by a professional footballer, she was not star-struck in the least. The player, who starred for a Football League club, was already friends on the social networking website with mutual acquaintances and she assumed that was how he came to first contact her. After their initial internet meeting, she and the 19-year-old player developed a closer relationship, chatting every day via their accounts and even talking regularly on the phone.

Lain, from Birmingham, said: “We just had normal, friendly chats. He would ask: what are you studying? Where are you from?”

Even when her online friend declared his love for her and asked her to send naked pictures of herself, she had no reason to doubt his identity. “I refused but then we’d talk on the phone. There was no question that it was a guy from London. His Facebook was flooded with girls, but I just thought he’s a footballer that’s totally normal. I know that I never met him and didn’t really know him, but if you chat to someone a lot you sort of feel like you know them. He seemed so normal,” she said.

The suspicion that she had been deceived came only when she received his telephone call and the number came up with Birmingham dialling code rather than a London one. This rang immediate alarm bells, and after some detective work Lain eventually traced the Facebook account to an older girl who went to the same school as she did.

It quickly emerged the student, who was in the year above, had set up a fake profile with pictures she had secretly downloaded from the account of a very real professional player. For her part, Lain said she simply felt embarrassed when she discovered she had been duped. “I never did get to the bottom of what motivated the hoax, but I was just so thankful that it wasn’t an old man.”

Lain’s bizarre experience is by no means an isolated case. Campaigners warn that growing numbers of children and teenagers are being bullied or even lured into sexual exchanges through bogus online profiles. Some young people are becoming depressed, even suicidal after falling victim, according to a survey by the charity Beatbullying.

Richard Piggin, deputy chief executive of Beatbullying, said: “Young people have told us about this alarming trend of fake profiles being used on social networking platforms to cyber bully and to engage in sexual bullying. The psychological impact of this form of bullying can be hugely distressing for many young people, with tragic and terrible consequences.” In a survey carried out by the anti-bullying charity, it discovered that nearly one-third of the 500 young people questioned say they have had a fake profile made about them on a social networking site. A further 65 per cent said they knew someone else who had been impersonated through a phoney account.

Beatbullying said the poll also showed that high numbers of the under-18s questioned had developed serious mental health issues after being targeted. Nearly one in 10 said they became depressed; 4 per cent developed an eating disorder; 7 per cent had suicidal feelings and the same number self-harmed. Another 13 per cent reported feeling afraid.

The extent of fake profiles on Facebook was revealed in the firm’s own financial records last August, which showed the site had 83 million fake profiles. But a Facebook spokesman stressed that the majority of these accounts had no malicious intent and were pages set up for businesses, pets or small children. He added that unlike with many other social networking sites, fake profiles can be reported directly to Facebook, which will then remove them. The spokesman stressed that the company acted swiftly on such reports. “Everyone on Facebook has access to simple tools to block and report people who make them uncomfortable.”

Mr Piggin added: “What social networking sites like Facebook need to do is work with organisations like us. They’re experts in technology, but they’re not experts in bullying and sexual bullying.”

Tony Neate, chief executive of the partly government-funded Get Safe Online, said: “Social networks are a great place for young people to talk to their friends, share photographs and play games – but children and parents must be educated on the risks that are around.”

Teachers To Be Given ‘Sexting’ Curb Guide

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Bullying, CEOP, guidance, images, internet, mobile phones, online safety, peer pressure, resources, school, sexting, support, teachers, Teens, young people

Teachers To Be Given ‘Sexting’ Curb Guide

Teachers are to be issued with a guide on how to deal with ‘sexting’ – the sharing of explicit photos or videos through mobile phones and the internet.

Amid a rise in pupils sending sexually explicit pictures, the advice pack, which is launched on Wednesday, offers tips on how to support a child whose image has been shared and whether the devices used should be searched.

A study by the NSPCC last year reported up to 40% of young people had been involved in ‘sexting’, and found teenage girls in particular were facing pressure from classmates to provide sexually explicit pictures of themselves.

Russell Hobby, general secretary of the National Association of Headteachers, welcomed the guidance.

He said: “The problem of ‘sexting’ – and the exposure of children to pornographic images through mobile devices – poses real and serious challenges for parents, head teachers and school staff.

“It exemplifies the way technology blurs the boundaries between school life and the wider world.”

The brochure – titled Sexting in schools: advice and support around self-generated images – will complement other resources already available to teachers, including ‘So You Got Naked Online’, produced last year by the South West Grid for Learning Trust.

Peter Davies, chief executive of the Child Exploitation and Online Protection (CEOP) Centre, which helped develop the new document, said: “There are very real risks with this activity by young people, from bullying to the sharing of these images among sex offenders.”

The CEOP had seen an increase in young people sharing sexual images and videos of themselves with their peer group, he said.

Last October, the Internet Watch Foundation found that 88% of self-generated, sexually explicit online content of young people had been taken from its original location and uploaded onto other websites.

Statistics from the children’s charity Beatbullying suggested 38% of young people have received a sexually explicit text or email, while 25% have received a sexual image they found offensive.

Research by the charity also suggested over half of teachers (54%) knew pupils were creating and sharing explicit material of themselves.

The newly-published guidance was developed by the Lucy Faithfull Foundation, a child protection charity, Securus Software, which provides online safety systems to over 3,200 schools, and Medway Council, whose existing advice for Kent schools was incorporated into the recommendations.

The Department of Education and the National Association of Headteachers also supported the development of the resource.

The pack will include advice to teachers about how to respond if a child tells them about ‘sexting’ they have been involved in, as well as how to handle explicit images, manage student reaction and prevent further incidents.

Case studies in the document highlight the devastating impact the sharing of explicit images can have on children’s lives and the challenges faced by schools in dealing with it.

Facebook Is The Worst Social Networking Site For Bullying, New Report Says

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abuse, Bebo, Blackberry Messenger, Bullying, Cyberbullying, Depression, Facebook, harassment, internet, self-harm, social networking sites, Teens, trolling, Whatsapp, young people

Facebook Is The Worst Social Networking Site For Bullying, New Report Says

Facebook is the worst social networking site for internet trolling, and bullying is now more prevalent online than anywhere else, a study has suggested.

Some 87% of teenagers who reported cyber abuse said they were targeted on Mark Zuckerberg’s site, while around one-fifth of youngsters were picked on by Twitter trolls, the report showed.

Those most frequently victimised were 19-year-old boys.

According to the report, 49% of those targeted by bullies were victimised off-line, while 65% of teenagers were subjected to abuse in cyberspace.

Only 37% of those who had experienced trolling ever reported it to the social network where it took place, the report found.

Emma-Jane Cross, CEO and founder of the charity BeatBullying, said many young people were suffering in silence.

“Bullying both on and off-line continues to be a serious problem for a huge number of teenagers and we cannot ignore its often devastating and tragic effects,” she said.

“We work with hundreds of young people being cyber-bullied or trolled so badly that it can lead to depression, truancy, self-harm, or even force them to contemplate or attempt suicide.”

The study, for internet site knowthenet.org.uk, found a number of social networking sites had become “popular forums” for trolls.

Some 13% of the 13 to 19-year-olds consulted claimed they were targeted on BlackBerry Messenger, 8% said they were picked on by trolls on Bebo and 4% said they were victimised on Whatsapp.

Fewer than one in five (17%) teens said their first reaction would be to tell a parent and only 1% of those surveyed said their initial response would be to inform a teacher.

Around 34% of those who were picked on by trolls said their experiences lasted more than a month.

Knowthenet, which released the study, has now launched a “trolling hub” offering advice on how to deal with online bullying.

Opinium Research consulted more than 2,000 teenagers for the study.

A Facebook spokesman said: “There is no place for harassment on Facebook, but unfortunately a small minority of malicious individuals exist online, just as they do offline.

“We have a real name policy and provide people with simple tools to block people or report content which they find threatening so that we can remove it quickly.”

Links to report concerning behaviour on Facebook exist on every page of the site meaning users can report any piece of content.