 It looks like any playground. Children enjoying themselves, joking around. But a closer look reveals bullying is occurring. Researchers used a hidden camera to videotape this scene. A group of boys tackles another boy to the ground. They repeatedly hit and kick him. He is in pain, but they don't let him get up. A bully even puts his foot on the chest of the boy on the ground. A group of girls is nearby, but they seemingly ignore the whole episode. According to the experts, bullying consists of repeated, aggressive behaviors directed by one or more children against another. Bullying occurs when there is an imbalance of power or strength. According to recent research published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, 30% of students in sixth through tenth grade have been bullied, bullied others, or both with some frequency within a school term. This represents more than five and a half million young people. Stan Davis is a school counselor, author, and bullying prevention expert. He and other experts say bullying can be reduced and even prevented in some cases if counseling strategies that have form and structure are used over time with consistency. Davis has students fill out a think about it form where they answer questions about their possible bullying behavior. Then he discusses the answer with them. The process stresses self reflection, honesty, and accountability as Davis and students show us in this reenactment. Well you know what strikes me, Gabrielle, is you're really halfway there. You're halfway to taking some responsibility because this issue of her losing friends. And you sort of take responsibility here and then you take it back at the end. Yeah? How about, and also might, how about writing this a little more positively? In other words, you either think you hurt her or you think you didn't. Talking with a kid about what was wrong with their behavior or how they could do better is gonna have very little effect unless that kid knows if I continue on with my bullying behavior consequences are gonna happen to me. We've got to recognize that for many kids bullying is a very reinforcing, a very pleasurable activity and just saying you shouldn't do that has very little effect in counterweighting the pleasure that these kids take in hurting others. Once though there's a cost and a predictable cost to that behavior then kids are ready to think about their actions and think about what was wrong with their actions. If this was the whole story, would you be sitting here inside at lunch? I don't know, I guess not. Would you give it some more thought, please? I'm sure this is part of it. Experts say students who are bullied are more likely than their peers to experience low self-esteem, depression, and suicidal thoughts. Young people often do not report bullying incidents because of feelings of shame or embarrassment. Ted Feinberg is the assistant executive director of the National Association of School Psychologists. He and his colleagues know the symptoms a bullied student may exhibit. Initially children can be anxious, they can develop psychosomatic patterns, they don't want to go to school, they may have a reduction in their school performance indicators, but if it goes on for long periods of time what we have seen are youngsters and adolescents becoming so depressed, so unhappy, so feeling that there is a sense of hopelessness in their life that we find that there are many youngsters who consider things like suicide as a way of coping with the pain and discomfort. He says there may be serious consequences if bullying behavior is left unchecked. We know that bullies, if we look at them down the road, we know that many youngsters who engage in bullying behaviors have a higher percentage of likelihood that they're going to be involved in the criminal justice system by the time they're 21. In terms of what it does to the community, I think it impacts on a number of levels. It impacts on an individual level obviously with a person who's being bullied, it impacts on the classroom level because bullying behavior is typically observed by others and there's a span of folks who are both interested in the bullying and repulsed by it. It impacts on the school in that it changes the complexion, the tone, the feel, the culture if you will of the school and it invariably impacts on the community in that the community feels less safe, less secure, less focused. Current research would suggest that bullies have very strong sense of self-esteem and identity. They do lack a sense of empathy, they do lack a sense of concern. Bullies tend to grow up in homes where there's inconsistent discipline which means that kids don't learn and what I do is the cause of what happens to me. They learn my parents' mood is the cause of what happens to me and homes in which there was relatively little positive parent-child interaction. Experts agree that in addition to working individually with children who bully and with children who are bullied, mental health professionals should be actively involved in efforts to prevent bullying. The most effective bullying prevention efforts are comprehensive and are focused on changing the social norms with respect to bullying. Counselors and other school-based mental health professionals have some really key roles in helping schools develop bullying prevention programs. First of all, they're likely to be the most highly trained in specifying and being clear about behavioral definitions of expectations and so they're going to be able to help the school define those expectations clearly. Second of all, they may have the most understanding of a school as a system so they'll be able to look at the systemic factors that may be encouraging, bullying or that on the other hand would encourage reporting and consistency. And the third is they're going to be able to either do or train others to do the kind of cognitive-behavioral interventions that I was modeling before. So they're very important resources in the process. One of the things that we talk about in our work with communities that have been impacted by crises of varying kinds is the notion of the conspiracy of silence among youngsters. And that relates to not wanting to snitch or to tattle tail or to reveal the information of this behavior that they are experiencing. Part of what we think is particularly important is to help children and teenagers realize that this conspiracy of silence does not serve them well, does not serve their friends and siblings well, does not serve their community well. But implicit in that is a notion of having to create within communities, within schools a culture and a climate that encourages students to come forth with this information so that the problem can be remedied.