Patti's Blog - Advocate for Elders, People with Disabilities and Their Families

Audrie Pott suicide: Grim picture of Saratoga teen's final online cries of despair

Excerpt from: The Oakland Press (click for full article)

Patti's comment:This is so very heartbreaking. Girls be careful out there!

 

A few days after Audrie Pott killed herself, while her baffled parents were grieving and students across the Saratoga High School campus wore her favorite color, teal, in her memory, a couple of the 15-year-old girl's closest friends came to Audrie's mother and delivered a shocking message: "There is more to this than you know."

Sheila Pott rushed to check her daughter's cellphone, emails, texts and Facebook page. And then she found the haunting words of her beautiful, once-bubbly daughter: "These guys did (expletive) to me while I was sleeping," read one message. "This is the worst day of my life," read another.

Not only had she been sexually assaulted after drinking too much at a house party, her family's lawyers say, but pictures of her naked during the attack were being shared online.

 

Comic Book Helps Protect Teens and Adults with Disabilities

Excerpt from: What Disability (click for full article)

 

The Department of Justice found in a recent study, that teens and adults with disabilities are twice as likely to experience abuse or violence than the average person. Those with cognitive disabilities are even more at risk.

Kidpower.org, a nonprofit leader in personal safety and confidence building, is trying to help those at risk help themselves. The latest iteration of their Safety Comics series is called Fullpower Safety Comics. It is designed to make learning personal safety skills accessible and fun for teens and adults with intellectual disabilities or limited literacy skills.

The author Irene van der Zande, who also is the executive director and founder of Kidpower said in a press release, "We have found that comics engage people of all ages and abilities, by being both entertaining and giving important information,...The Fullpower Safety Comics helps teens and adults, including those with limited reading or spoken language abilities, learn and practice physical and social skills to help keep them safe from bullying, abuse and other violence."

The Decisive Element in the Classroom: What Successful Classroom Teachers Do to Stop Bullying

Excerpt from: Huffington Post (click for full article)

 

Classroom teachers have everything to do with stopping bullying. There. I said it. I often hesitate to make this assertion so plainly when speaking to educators, fearing my next move will have to be fending off rotten tomatoes lobbed at my head by teachers who won't stand for having yet another responsibility heaped onto their already-overflowing plates.

If the spoiled fruit ever were to be thrown my way, I would understand the sentiment, but the fact that they never are is a true testament to the tremendous job that most classroom teachers willingly take on every day of the school year. The teachers who are making a difference in the movement to stop bullying are engaged role models of kindness and expert masters of diplomacy. They are true champions of the underdog and astute shapers of peer culture. They are not afraid to be direct and to confront bullying behavior whenever they see it. These teachers are improving the lives of young people each and every day and demonstrating that time spent on bullying prevention is time saved on conflict, alienation, academic struggles, and victimization.

Ellen's mum: Not supporting gay marriage is bullying

Excerpt from: Bendigo Advertiser (click for full article)

 

Betty DeGeneres, 82, is a gay rights campaigner and the mother of the world's most famous lesbian, not necessarily in that order.

Ellen DeGeneres has a TV audience of at least 4 million viewers per episode in the US alone and is here in Australia to film segments for her show.

Betty is here, too, and addressed a PFLAG meeting at Westmead last Saturday. PFLAG is a worldwide organisation providing information and support to the families and friends of gay and lesbians.*

Betty says it was hard enough for Ellen to come out once, at age 20, to her family – let alone a second time, in her 30s, to 36 million people. That time it almost cost her everything.

WOLFFE: Those with disabilities are favorite targets of bullies

Excerpt from: The Oakland Press (click for full article)

 

People with disabilities have been the targets of bullies probably since the first man or woman picked up a tree limb and used it as a weapon.

That action of using a tool as a weapon in prehistoric times made scrawny Homo sapiens the dominant predators on this planet.

It is in our very nature — in our DNA — to fear what we don’t understand or those things or people that are different. That’s rich soil to breed a bully or a totalitarian nation.

It is also in our nature, perhaps what religions call “original sin,” to strike out for any reason at what we fear rather than to try and understand someone unusual or vulnerable.

The Decisive Element in the Classroom: What Successful Classroom Teachers Do to Stop Bullying

Excerpt from: Huffington Post (click for full article)

 

Classroom teachers have everything to do with stopping bullying. There. I said it. I often hesitate to make this assertion so plainly when speaking to educators, fearing my next move will have to be fending off rotten tomatoes lobbed at my head by teachers who won't stand for having yet another responsibility heaped onto their already-overflowing plates.

If the spoiled fruit ever were to be thrown my way, I would understand the sentiment, but the fact that they never are is a true testament to the tremendous job that most classroom teachers willingly take on every day of the school year. The teachers who are making a difference in the movement to stop bullying are engaged role models of kindness and expert masters of diplomacy. They are true champions of the underdog and astute shapers of peer culture. They are not afraid to be direct and to confront bullying behavior whenever they see it. These teachers are improving the lives of young people each and every day and demonstrating that time spent on bullying prevention is time saved on conflict, alienation, academic struggles, and victimization.

Bullying And Psychiatric Illness Linked

Excerpt from: NPR (click for full article)

 

A new study on bullying shows that people who were bullied have higher rates of psychiatric illness as adults. Host Michel Martin speaks with the study's lead author, William Coleman of Duke University, and bullying expert Rosalind Wiseman.

Breaking: New 20 Year Study on Effects of Bullying

Excerpt from: Special Education Law Blog (click for full article)

 

Bullying of children with disabilities continues to be the hot button issue in special education law. The Special Education Law Blog has previously run an in depth series of posts on bullying of children with disabilities.  Here is the index to that series.

Recent news concerning the effects of bullying on children in general provides more insight into the harmful effects of this nasty phenomenon. The effects may be worse than previously suspected.

In breaking news, a study was released last week that followed children who were bullied or were bullies or both for a period of twenty years. The study by William E. Copeland, PhD; Dieter Wolke, PhD; Adrian Angold, MRCPsych; E. Jane Costello, PhD was published in the JAMA Psychiatry Journal and can be reviewed here. A summary by DukeHealth.org can be read here.

New Study Links Childhood Bullying to Adult Psychological Disorders, Surprising Even the Study's Authors

Excerpt from: Slate (click for full article)

 

A significant study from Duke, out today, provides the best evidence we’ve had thus far that bullying in childhood is linked to a higher risk of psychological disorders in adulthood. The results came as a surprise to the research team. “I was a skeptic going into this,” lead author and Duke psychiatry professor William E. Copeland told me over the phone, about the claim that bullying does measurable long-term psychological harm. “To be honest, I was completely surprised by the strength of the findings. It has certainly given me pause. This is something that stays with people.”

Based on the findings, Copeland and his team divided their subjects into three groups: People who were victims as children, people who were bullies, and people who were both. The third group is known as bully-victims. These are the people who tend to have the most serious psychological problems as kids, and in the Duke study, they also showed up with higher levels of anxiety, depressive disorders, and suicidal thinking as adults. The people who had only experienced being victims were also at heightened risk for depression and anxiety. And the bullies were more likely to have an antisocial personality disorder.

Red Wings defenseman to donate NHL tickets to those with autism

Excerpt from: The Oakland Press (click for full article)

 

Niklas Kronwall, defenseman for the Detroit Red Wings, has donated tickets for each remaining home game to families living with autism identified through Autism Alliance of Michigan’s partner organizations.

Home games allow families to enjoy the experience of a Red Wings’ game at the Joe Louis Arena.

Kronwall, 32 and who has scored 10 points this abbreviated NHL season, was turned onto AAoM after hearing Anthony Ianni speak about awareness and safety training for those with autism who face bullying.

He speaks of a need for acceptance, understanding, and eliminating bullying of those with autism.

While bullying occurs throughout schools, those with autism and other disabilities are often bullied more frequently than those without any disability.