‘Immeasurable trauma’: China is trying to solve school bullying, but is it ready to face the causes?
- Government says juvenile offenders ‘endanger social harmony’, but bullying is a society-wide mental health issue, experts warn
- Solutions must go beyond policy, discipline and punishment so delinquents ’understand that their actions are crimes’
By any standard, what happened to a 13-year-old boy in northern China earlier this year was gruesome and shocking.
The killing has also prompted collective soul-searching as parents, youth workers, policymakers and mental health experts try to make sense of the senseless, and answer logical questions: what went wrong, and how can it be fixed?
In the eyes of some, the problem may have stemmed from familiar challenges in China. Society-wide trauma created by long-term separation of children from their parents – common among families of China’s migrant workers – is as much about dangers to juvenile mental health as long-term social stability.
People who work with juvenile delinquents say most cases show similar patterns. Psychiatrist Zhong Lianghong said children usually inherited violent behaviours from their families.
She said she once counselled a teenage boy who had a record of bullying his classmates. During family interviews, she learned that the boy’s father was an alcoholic and had violently abused him.