Health Promotion Program for Bullying Reduction in Schools

This article discusses the implementation of a health promotion program to reduce bullying in schools. The program includes counsellor/teacher intervention, video intervention, and multimedia intervention. The aim is to enhance knowledge and awareness, increase safety around the school, create a positive school climate, and reduce the long-term effects of bullying.

8IntroductionIntroduction
HEALTH PROMOTION PROGRAM
HEALTH PROMOTION PROGRAM
Name of the Student:
Name of the University:
Author Note:

1HEALTH PROMOTION PROGRAM
Introduction
When people think about bullying, one can imagine a picture of a children that is
physically abused, teased, taunted by their peers. While it is important to note that the medical
professionals have started to view this a common problem. The bullying behaviour is a viewed as
a major health issue that is concerted and coordinated and it also requires the attention of the
school administrators, educators, families, policy makers, healthcare providers and parents (1).
Bullying results in to a psychological and biological consequences due to peer victimization.
there are a range of psychological and emotional effect of bullying and it affects both the victims
and the perpetrators. While it has been mentioned that bullying is associated with a wide range of
the emotional, physical symptoms and health issues. The ones that are bullied have highly
complained of having stomach aches and headaches and along with it face difficulty in falling
asleep. The victims have reported to have been experiencing significant levels of anxiety and
depression (2).
The chosen target audience for the health promotion program include the children that are
aged between the 9 to 17 years and the children that are aged between 5 to 12 years. These
audiences selected within this age group because these children at this age are school goers and
mainly face the issue of bullying during the school hours.
Health promotion program
Health promotion program focusses on the keeping people healthy and out of keep people
aware of any imminent danger. The health promotion programs help the individual to choose a
healthy behaviour by empowering them. It is important to mention that bullying is described as
an exposure of a student to a systematic and repeated, over the time and intention discomfort

2HEALTH PROMOTION PROGRAM
inflicted by one or more than one students (3). It is a form of a distressing and aggressive
behaviour that usually gets manifested into psychological, verbal and physical attack.
Considering the fact that bullying is prevalent in schools, the health promotion program will be
conducted in a school environment where the chances of getting bullied is the most. Moreover,
bullying will be restricted through the effective use of a behaviour change model called the
Social Cognitive Theory/model. It is important to mention that social cognitive model is used to
describe and it can be used to learn how individuals learn to bully (4). For example, it is
important to mention that individual that experiences domestic violence in their homes are more
likely to bully other that are not exposed to the domestic violence. therefore, adolescents and the
children that socialize with the peers that are aggressive are more likely to perpetrate the acts
bullying in comparison to the ones that do not socialize with the aggressive peers (5).
According to the social cognitive theory, the adolescents and the children avoid the acts
in which type fear that they will be punished. Else they engage into the behaviour that type feel
that they will be rewarded. Therefore, the children that get indulged into the behaviour of
bullying somehow know that they will be rewarded. Moreover, such individuals will be
repeatedly act in a way that will promote bullying (6). Therefore, the evidences suggest that the
adolescents and children are more likely to engage into the behaviour of bullying are the ones
that are more likely to get exposed to bullying or other type of aggressive behaviour, endorse the
attitudes of bullying, and interact with the individuals that are covertly and overtly indicate that
bullying is acceptable and it is rewarding. Thus, a behavioural change model is required to bring
changes into the behaviour of the adolescents and the children that engage into the act of
bullying. It is important to mention that the cognitive behavioural interventions (CBI) are
influenced by the social cognitive theory and bullying is considered as a cognitive behavioural

3HEALTH PROMOTION PROGRAM
phenomenon and it can be considered as an ideal in reducing bullying. CBI exclusively focuses
on an individual's dysfunctional beliefs and highlights that modifying the dysfunctional
behaviour can actually lead to change in behaviour and thoughts (appendix) (7).
The campaign of health promotion on bullying will include three different kind of
interventions and it will be done through the cognitive behavioural intervention. teacher or
counsellor intervention- the counsellor or the teacher will be meeting with the meeting with the
students and parents of the students of the school and they will be conducting a meeting for a
period of 1 hour for a total of 8 weeks. The intervention will begin with the search of the terms
like bystander, victim and bullying (8). The definition of these terms will be searched. The
children and the adolescents will be asked to define what these were in their own words and in a
simple way. In the next step, the teacher of the counsellor will initiate a discussion on self-
esteem and this will be followed by a conflict resolution (9). Moreover, classes will be held to
discuss about the school rules pertaining to bullying. The students are made to repeat that they
won’t be bullying, they will help the victims of bullying and they will be including others that
are left out. The final weeks will be used to make an analysis of the bullying behaviour incidents.
The students are taught by playing active role players and are asked to re-enact a bullying
incident. Children at the same time are asked about the ways in which the events could have been
different. The counsellor will be meeting separately with each of the students and will be
identifying the victims and bullies for 30 minutes for every child (10). Video intervention- Video
set will be organized so that the so that the students will be helped in understanding and reducing
the bullying as well as victimization. The video will have a time period of 30 minutes and it will
be shown during the second, fifth, seventh and eighth weeks. Video will be selected because they
will be made for the ones that are in the age group of 5 to 9 aged students (11). The videos will

4HEALTH PROMOTION PROGRAM
be including information on the bystanders, victims, and bullies. The videos will have all the
information and scenarios of bullying and it will be resolved by the different characters. The
students will be taught a specific intervention plan which will be helping the specific intervention
method like stop, before reacting you must calm down and think about the solutions and then try
the solution (12). Multimedia intervention- Along with the teacher or counsellor meeting for all
the students across all age group, an intervention will also be provided through the multimedia
disks or pen drives. The multimedia content will be prepared specifically for the ones that are
aged 7 to 9 years of age. The multimedia content will be providing relaxation and it will be
including the small quiz shows and it will be including the mini-scenarios (13). The student will
be asked to pick a correct answer in a correct manner and it will be conducted in a way so that
that it can reduce the bullying behaviours among the students. The relaxing part will include
apart where the students will be imagining that they are now on a beach and are calming down
and relaxing. The students will be directed that they should be working on their own pace on the
different types of modules that are contained in a multimedia disk or pen drive. The maximum
time that will be required to complete the quiz in the pen drive or multimedia disks with once
every week (14).
The resources that will be required for the campaign will include teachers, counsellors,
videos, pen, paper, costumes, pen drives and multimedia disks and computers, big screen TVs.
Communication strategy
The communication strategy will include announcements in selected schools. Emails will
be sent to the schools that are interested in conducting the campaign. The campaign will be
conducted in such selected school will majority of the emphasis being put in designing the stages
of the campaign (15). A total of 8 weeks will be taken to conduct the entire campaign and the at

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the same it will be mentioned in the letter that the final week will have an assessment week to
check the effect of the campaign (16).
Conclusion
From the above discussion it can be concluded that, bullying is associated with a wide
range of the emotional, physical symptoms and health issues. The adolescents and children are
more likely to engage into the behaviour of bullying are the ones that are more likely to get
exposed to bullying or other type of aggressive behaviour, endorse the attitudes of bullying, and
interact with the individuals that are covertly and overtly indicate that bullying is acceptable and
it is rewarding. Therefore, counsellor intervention, Video intervention, multimedia intervention
has been selected and it will be conducted across 8 weeks.

6HEALTH PROMOTION PROGRAM
Reference
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Reduction of
bullying in
schools by
actively
participating in
health promotion
program of
bullying
Counsellor/teacher
intervention
Video intervention
Multimedia
intervention
Teacher or
counsellor will
bring both the
students and the
parents into this
program.
Video
intervention will
be provided only
to the students
aged between 5 to
7 years.
Multimedia
intervention will
be provided to the
students that are
aged between 7 to
9 years.
Enhance
knowledge and
awareness
Increase safety
around the school
Parental awareness
Reduce long-term
effect of bullying
Create positive
school climate
Students will be
able to disengage
themselves from
the activities of
bullying
INPUT/AIM ACTIVITIES OUTPUTS IMPACT OUTCOME
8IntroductionIntroduction
HEALTH PROMOTION PROGRAM