No abstract

No abstract

No abstract

IntroductionBullying is a serious problem for school youth. It is prevalent across the elementary and secondary school years and it has serious consequences for both bullies and victims.ObjectivesThe aim of this study was to investigate the relationship between self-esteem and bullying behavior.MethodsWe conducted a cross-sectional study including children enrolled in two high schools in Sousse, Tunisia. The students were asked to complete two questionnaires: the Adolescent Peer Relations Instrument witch is a multidimensional scale designed to assess bullying involvement both as target and perpetrator and the Rosenberg self-esteem scale.ResultsWe recruited 600 adolescent. The mean age of our population was 13.76 ±1.37 and the sex ratio was 1. More than 95% of adolescent who reported that they had been victims of bullying had a very low self-esteem comparing to those who stated that they had never been bullied (4.4%). Our results have also shown that bullies had a lower self-esteem than children who had not bullied others.ConclusionsWe found that both victims and bullies tend to have low self-esteem. Our findings could help to understand better the role that individual characteristics and personal qualities such as self-esteem play on bullying, and provide the scientific knowledge to develop successful strategies to prevent this phenomenon.

IntroductionSchool Bullying is an educational and a health care issue that was kept hided for a long time. Despite, growing interest about this issue, it’s still a topic that is not well known and well analysed in Tunisia.Objectives- Evaluate the prevalence of school bullying among Middle school students - Establish the psychological profile of harassersMethodsIt’s a cross sectional study including 600 students of 2 middle schools of the region of Sousse -Tunisia during the month of March 2020. “The adolescent peer relations instrument” was used to identify school bullying and its type. The “Child Behaviour Checklist” questionnaire was used to identify emotional and behavioural problems among children. Self esteem levels were evaluated by the “Rosenberg Self Esteem Scale”.ResultsThe mean age of participants was 13 years and 9 months ±1 year and 4 months. 95.1 % of the participants have experienced school harassment, but also 92% of them harassed their peers. Boys were more frequently bullies than girls (p<0.01). There was no significant difference in self esteem levels between bullies and non-bullies adolescents. Among the 8 syndroms explored by the Child behaviour checklist, adolescents experiencing one of the 7 folllowing items (Anxious syndrome, Depressive syndrome, Aggressive behaviour, Attention problems, Social problem, Thoughts problems and Withdrawal problems) had significantly higher risk of being a bully (p values between 0.001 and 0.02).ConclusionsThis study emphasizes the high prevalence of school bullying among adolescents in Tunisia. Most of the psychological problems explored in this study seem to be higher among bullies.