A whole year of blogging.

Well today is a special day. For me that is. Maybe other people, but mainly me. This blog has been going on for a whole year now. It started of as just some rambling about music on Facebook, in the form of Facebook Notes. I had already written a few notes and wanted to expand it a little bit so decided to revisit Blogger and make a new account. I had already used blogger for my now defunct Judas Disciple and Mind of the Buddha. My very first entry was my defence of Sepultura's Roorback. Mainly I had just concentrated on writing about music, because I really really like listening to music. I didn't really expect to reach a big audience, this has purely been for my own satisfaction. Well... sometimes it does feel good when you receive nice feedback, it was especially nice when Queensryche shared my blog about them and all of the sudden I had this massive surge of like-minded Queensryche fans. Which I had never seen before. As most people will have noticed (and quite a few have commented on) I do have the tendency to write about heavy metal music. But from time to time I have also written about something completely different like Baby Dee, Jon Lord and Bill Hicks. Often I try to write about rather obscure bands that, in my mind, deserve a lot more attention. Bands like Xanthochroid, Thy Catafalque, and Blaze Bayley.

Then one day I came across this stupid meme shard by 9Gag on Facebook. About how people who are bullied should stop whining, or some kind of stupid shit like that and it pissed me off and then I got an apology message from an unexpected source. So I decided to write about my experience of being bullied at school. It was one of the most shared blogs I had written up to that point and I felt like a load had been lifted off my shoulders, again. Then I returned to writing about music. Shortly after I received a message from Throwdown Syndicate asking me if I fancied writing about them, something completely new to me. So I did. Then I started getting itchy palms about writing something else. One day while cycling I started noticing how many cyclists weren't using helmets, the following day I counted how many cyclists and how many of them were using helmets. It pissed me off so much that I decided to hit Google Scholar and Quest, thanks to me being in a university I was able to read even more studies. This was the result. This was followed up with a, uhhh, follow up to my bullying blog talking about the social impact and the social price we all pay for bullying.

I had been an avid reader of the Skeptical Raptor and other science-y debunk sites and wanted to get in on the game. Then after a little while I wrote a blog about the Flu Vaccine, which in turn got changed to Student Nurse Perspective entries. Then Mr Skeptical Raptor asked if he could reblog it, which I would have been a fool to say no to. Since then I've written about IT in healthcare, importance of education, being male and GMO's. These have been the most satisfying to write because I always feel like I've learned something after I've written them, and this series has also been my most successful one in terms of views. If there is one thing I will miss when I qualify it's the University's journal database. Sure I can probably still read the books, but I won't be able to access the database.

I still write mostly about music. But on the whole this blog has become my platform to vent out. I still use it to develop my writing skills. And I still publish on a very regular sporadic basis. I've tried to make money out of, but I don't think I'll ever be able to make a living out of it. Currently my income from this blog stands at 55 pence. As it stands I have had 11123 pageviews, which in the grand scheme of things isn't much, but in my little bubble it is a fairly considerable amount. This is the third month in a row where I get more then 1000 views. Which is fairly considerable for considering that at one point I was struggling to get over 200.

Thanks to the blog I have also come across some wonderful people, some who I'd tentatively probably call friends. I have no idea if I've got some regular readers, if I do. Please leave a comment... or not if you don't want to.

But on the whole, thanks for reading.

Yours Truly,
Ingvar Arni Ingvarsson.

Student Nurse Perspective: The social price of bullying.

After writing about the emotional impact that bullying had on my life I got some really nice feedback. I thought that maybe I had actually laid some ghosts back to rest after that but unfortunately my brain kept on noticing all these interesting articles on bullying and what potential and actual social impact it has. There was one particular article in The Conversation that got my attention. It included a rather long and time consuming study following 1420 kids into adulthood. What it largely said was that being bullied at school was a major indicator in decreased quality of aspects of life. With general poorer outcomes of physical and psychological health for victims and bullies. But the biggest difference was for kids who were "bully-victims". Bully-victims were at even higher risk of suffering from diabetes, asthma, anxiety, depression and more likely to pick up smoking. So in other words bullying can potentially destroy someone's life. And all for what some people seem to think is a normal part of childhood. What this study also points out, which had been said in previous studies, that pure bullies are not some emotionally scarred individuals from broken backgrounds but. They have better social understanding, can read emotional situations better and knowledge of how to manipulate others for their own purposes. They also tend to be the paradoxically both the most popular and the most hated kids in school, as everyone wants to be with them but they don't particularly like them. But in adulthood they are also at an increased risk of being on the wrong side of the law. But the bully-victims on the other hand do tend to be more socially awkward with pre-existing emotional and behavioral problems and from dysfunctional family background.

Being bullied is not a harmless rite of passage but throws a long shadow over affected people’s lives.

The biggest impact generally though was that bullying affected negatively on all groups. As you can see from the chart below the only group unaffected were the ones who had not been involved in bullying. But in a separate chart in the same study they also show how big an impact long term bullying has as opposed to  short term bullying, with the biggest difference being in future social behaviour. Bullies, bully-victims and chronic victims had difficulties in present and future educational settings, meaning that they will most likely have left before attaining any qualifications. But all three groups had problems in retaining jobs. Now I'd like to make this clear and say that no this does not happen to every one who has bullied or been bullied. But that does not mean that we can just sit back, do nothing and yes calmly say "Well kids will be kids." Just to hope that they'll be fine and remain unaffected later in life. This is a social issue that everyone has to help with and as this research suggests we shouldn't only focus on the victims, but we should also help bullies. Which means that some parents have to come to terms with that they're children are bullies. Not only come to terms with it, but to deal with it.

There was a period not that long ago when I was really set up in setting up a support/educational group for victims of bullying and their close ones. Unfortunately I ran out of steam before that ever happened, but I did do an awful lot of research while I had this fire in my belly. I read books and papers, even phoned up some organizations in the capital. I had collected quite a lot of info, which I had dumped into what was at the time the only anti-bullying site in Icelandic at the time but which is now lost in the etherworld(now if anyone could find it I'd be much obliged). I still got a lot of it somewhere on paper. I think... I hope anyway. The best thing though since turning into adulthood and with the advances of the internet and going to University now, I've been able to hunt down more actual university papers on the effects of bullying. Like the ones I linked earlier.

The author that seemed to have done the biggest and best research was a Swede who did most of his work in Norway named Dan Olweus. He wrote a seminal book called Bullying at School. Through his research in Norway in how to combat bullying at school, he established the phenomenally successful "Bullying Prevention Programme". Which in turn has developed into "Violence Prevention Works", that website does provide some excellent resources for everyone to use.  He provides probably the best definition of bullying that I know of, and sweet Jebus I've heard people try to shoehorn so many aspects into bullying. Essentially you will find people who dislike some certain behaviours will try and class those as bullying.

Bullying is systematic abuse of power and refers to repeated aggression against another person that is intentional and involves an imbalance of power.

There have been a few meta-analysis done regarding the effectiveness of bullying prevention programmes. The most comprehensive I came across was done for the Journal of Experimental Criminology. But essentially what they did find was that the on average Bullying Prevention Programmes decreased incidents of bullying by up to 23%. Not the world, but it's a start. The most effective ones were it the ones that had the most intense programmes, including those that had formal parenting meetings, increased break-time supervision and disciplinary methods(Just to make it clear disciplinary here is not in the form of physical or mental aggression, like keel-hauling, but rather loss of privileges and the like). The least effective ones, in fact the ones that lead to an increase of bullying were the peer support groups. It would appear that the Olweus Bullying Prevention Programme is the best there is. Along with that there are some excellent institutions out there that help like Red Balloon this organization provide a safe haven for kids who've been chronically bullied. What they offer is a sort of intensive care with full time education in order to assist kids, with the aim that they'll be able to return to mainstream education. According to them "At least half of the students we take have attempted or seriously considered suicide.". They also oversaw the publication of Rising Above Bullying, one the most inspirational books I've read in recent years. Currently there are only 5 Red Balloon centres in the UK, it would be great to see that number increase along with a nationwide roll-out of Olweus Bullying Prevention Programme.

What a lot of people don't realise is how big an impact bullying has. The said thing is that sometimes what it takes for people to be aware of it is somebody committing suicide. With as high as 44% of suicide committed by 10-14 year old being due to persistent bullying, and for every actual suicide there are as many as 100 suicide attempts. And all for "a harmless rite of passage". This of course is not just confined to school bullying, this can also be related to cyber-bullying and workplace bullying. Though work-bullying is not the focus here, it is still good to mention that even adults still behave in this way, if just a bit more subtly than kids in school.

*Added 19/04/14*

American Journal of Psychiatry did a study that followed people over a 50 year period.  The idea was to find out of course the long term problems that constant bullying has on people's mental and social health. The population of the cohort was 7771, questionnaires were sent on a regular basis and the subjects were met at 23 years of age and 50 years. The results were quite striking:

Participants who were bullied in childhood had increased levels of psychological distress at ages 23 and 50. Victims of frequent bullying had higher rates of depression, anxiety disorders, and suicidality than their nonvictimized peers.

Essentially childhood bullying is not something that is just confined to childhood. Being bullied on a frequent basis has very serious long term effects, and not just on the individual who has been bullied. The effect will be felt by the parents, future partners, children, friends, the local health and social care network and so on and so forth.

A similar study had been done in Finland which was published in 2009. Interestingly this study showed that boys who bullied were in greater need of psychiatric assistance for depression and anxiety as they grew older but girls who were bullied were in greater need psychiatric hospital assistance.


The focus shouldn't only be on the bullying victim, the bully very often ends up being a victim as time passes. We need to exterminate this idea that bullying is normal part of childhood and that we should just let it run it's course. Because the course is lifelong, for some that life will be shorter because of bullying. This is a social problem that affects all of us one way or the other whether we like to admit to it or not. And it's a problem that everyone should help to tackle. The local authorities, to the teachers and parents.

Time doesn't heal all wounds.

This post has come about after several days of contemplating. I thought it might be time to actually write this thing.

Recently I got a private message on Facebook from a guy who I didn't bear any particular grudge against, but wasn't to fond of either. It was a message of an apology for stuff said and stuff done to me some years ago. Though the person I would most like to get an apology from hasn't done so yet, and I'm not holding my breath for it either. It was the second time I've received a message like that, and both times sort of got me down a little bit because it forced me into thinking about past events.

On the whole I would say that I had a fairly happy childhood. I lived in a small town with less than 2000 residents(most of the time). What I didn't have was a happy school time. I hated every year of my ten years that I spent in primary and secondary school. For ten years I had to live with being called names, mocked, made fun of and generally being targeted for reasons unknown. I took every opportunity to make sure that I was sick so I wouldn't have to go to school. During those sickness periods I would spent watching TV, reading books and listening to music. So it could be said that they were the making of the person I am today. 

So yeah, I was the outcast, the loner, the freak if you will of my class. Anything and every thing that I did was wrong in some kind of way. I hated studying for school but I loved spending time in the library (where my mum worked) and read books. I rarely did my homework, which was one source of taunts and when I did do my homework I was also made fun of. So no matter what I did I would always be made fun off.

Mocked.

Belittled.

Humiliated.

Made to feel less of a being than the rest. All of this was mainly due to one person, but the rest didn't help. Some encouraged him, some joined him, most just stayed out of the way and ignored it.

As my sister so elegantly put it, No one asks to be bullied. No one. And anyone who suggests otherwise never had to go through life thinking it wasn't worth living.

I remember once plucking up the courage to speak to the principal at the time, I never told my parents what was happening though, who very quickly dismissed it and mostly just didn't want to know. And the class teacher(the same class teacher for 5 years) seemed to give the class even more fodder, whether she did it knowingly or not I don't know. But to this day I do bear a little grudge against her as well.

A lot of people seemed to think bullying is just a normal part of childhood, that it is there to "toughen up" weak kids, while ignoring the quiet suffering of so many. Well it is not a normal part of any childhood, no one let alone a child deserves to go through life like they are some how inferior and less worthy of life then others. That is what bullying teaches the victims. Not self-sufficiency, so it teaches us that we are better of dead. But towards the end part of those ten years that is what I had started to believe. The sad truth being that sometimes it takes someone dying to make a difference.

At the tail of of the secondary school I was depressed verging on suicidal. But I didn't tell anyone. During that period I had also started listening to heavy metal quite intensely and I was open about my music taste at school as well, and again I was the odd one out. Though since then I've come to find out that shit loads of my peers listened to the same or similar music as I did. It might have been my affinity for classical music as well, that didn't help.

In my head it all sort of collapsed when I tried to kill myself.

I had been contemplating it for some time. How easier it would be all around for everyone if I just wasn't there any more.

Then I tried it again.

Neither time anyone knew of it. The first time I couldn't go through with it and the second time I finally realised what it would do to my family. Especially if anyone found my body.

I tried it twice.

What followed was a gradual realization of that I didn't deserve any of this. Why would I should I let bastards wear me down. My sisters didn't deserve what they were going through either. And at the time I created the first Icelandic website  dedicated against Bullying. Though that website seems to be lost in the midst of the might Internet Jungle. The idea at the time was to start a group, and I had started all the planning. Got some posters made by my brother(third one). Things written. But it wasn't to be. But I would like to think that it got the ball rolling, because now there's at least two big groups in Iceland dedicated to fight against bullying.

There had been discussion before in the media, some talk in the school that I had attended (New principal), and I still remember the day when I walked in there to complain to both the principal and the vice principal to complain about the treatment of my youngest sister. One of her bullies at the time also happened to be the vice-principals son.

Due to the website I started getting phone calls from both victims and parents of victims. And I realised that I was not on my own with my experiences. One of the phone calls was from a political blogger who wanted to make a documentary entitled Bullying: Hell on Earth, and he wanted to interview me. The day before it was shown on national television I had written a blog naming and shaming few people in my home town, especially some higher uppers in relation to my eldest brother and his treatment. It sparked a huge discussion in my home town, some of course questioned why I decided to publish it in an open forum. Some people suggested that what I had done constituted as bullying, which just goes to show that some people don't know what bullying is. Most supported what I had written and thanked me, because those were the sort of issues that everyone knew of in a small town. But no one talked about, because it just wasn't the sort of thing that was talked about.

Today. Today I am a fairly happy individual. I moved away from Iceland. I got two kids that I love dearly and I am finally enjoying being in the educational environment.

The memories still hurt, but not as much these days. Time doesn't heal all wounds, it just makes it more bearable to live with.

Edit:
I wrote a companion piece to this entry called The Social Price of Bullying, with some selected studies on why bullying IS a very important issue and does affect all of us.