Watch for stress and bullying as the school year ends

As the school year winds down, and students face finals, graduation requirements, proms and figuring out their summer jobs and activities, some students report an increase in stress, sadness and bullying, a Colorado psychologist said this week.

Max Wachtel, psychologist for Denver’s KUSA-TV 9News, urged parents and educators to be aware of the potential for this harmful behavior, as “the best course of action” for a bullied child is to remove themselves from the situation and tell an adult.

Bringing the bullying “into the open” shifts the power away from the bully, who typically isolates the victims, and toward adults and peers who can help the bullied child, Mr. Wachtel said April 22.

In the Washington area, a District-based program that focuses on building friendships and mentoring relationships is hosting a seminar Thursday aimed at disarming bullying, drug abuse and dating violence.

Around 200 teens from D.C. public middle schools are attending a “Stop the Silence, Prevent the Violence” seminar hosted by the Best Friends Foundation at the National 4-H Youth Conference Center in Chevy Chase.

Research from the group’s Best Friends program for girls and Best Men program for boys finds that over the school year, bullying drops by half for students in the programs, from 13.2 percent to 6.3 percent.

“Friendship is at the foundation of our program,” Best Friends founder Elayne Bennett noted in her 2013 book, “Daughters in Danger.”

The decline in bullying incidents among program participants is partly due to its focus on “the importance of friends standing up to collective bad behavior,” she said.

According to stopbullying.gov, between 1 in 4 and 1 in 3 U.S. students say they have been bullied at school.

Most bullying happens in middle school, and the most common types are verbal and social bullying.

Most states have some form of anti-bullying laws on the books. On Tuesday, Montana Gov. Steve Bullock signed the Bully Free Montana Act into law.

The law defines and prohibits bullying in schools, and permits victims to seek a remedy or compensation through administrative means, as well as through civil and criminal courts.