The Wellness Recovery Action Plan: Creating an Instruction Manual for Your Mental Health

November 27, 2020 Mark Wilhelm

Imagine you wake up one day and discover that you feel a bit “off.” Maybe you’re more irritable than usual, or maybe you just feel unmotivated. Maybe you find yourself straying from your normal morning routine. You can tell that something is different, but you can’t quite put your finger on it, so you try to go about your day as normal.

Later that day, something happens that upsets you. Perhaps someone makes a rude comment toward you, or perhaps you receive a piece of troubling news. This only worsens your mood, and you’re unable to stop thinking about the upsetting event as the day progresses. You keep revisiting it in your mind, but you don’t know what to do to make yourself feel better, so you simply try to ignore these thoughts as much as possible and make it through the rest of the day.

You succeed, but you don’t feel any better the next day. Or the day after that. Or next week. In fact, you seem to be getting worse. Little things that bother you keep happening each day, and your mood just won’t improve. You feel like there’s a dark cloud hanging over you everywhere you go. You’ve lost all interest in things you used to enjoy, and you realize that if something doesn’t change soon, your mental health is going to be in a very bad place. But no matter how hard you try, you can’t figure out what you need to do to start feeling better again.

At times like these, you might wish you had an instruction manual to tell you what’s wrong with your mental health and how you can fix it. The bad news is that no such manual exists—but the good news is that it’s possible to create one. It’s called a Wellness Recovery Action Plan (or WRAP), and it’s a tool you can use to track your mental wellness, identify sources of stress, and regain control when your health takes a turn for the worse.

In this blog post, Cummins’ Carman Allen, a Certified Recovery Specialist and Recovery Coach, walks us through the ins and outs of WRAP and how anyone can use it to create a personal instruction manual for their mental health.

Getting a Handle on WRAP

The Wellness Recovery Action Plan was first developed in 1997 by a group of people who were searching for ways to overcome their own mental health challenges. The most prominent of these individuals was Mary Ellen Copeland, PhD, who remains the public face of WRAP today.

At its core, WRAP is a self-determined, evidence-based tool that a person can use to get well and stay well. The key to WRAP lies in self-observation, self-awareness, and thoughtful planning. As we said above, you can think of it as an instruction manual for your mental health that tells you what to do to stay well and how to start feeling better if you become unwell. “WRAP covers a vast amount of techniques people can use to be able to help themselves,” explains Cummins’ Carman Allen.

A WRAP (sometimes called a WRAP plan) consists of seven major elements:

Wellness toolbox: These are activities you do in your life that help you feel well. They might include a wide variety of activities that are beneficial for your mental health, such as getting plenty of sleep every night, eating a healthy diet, exercising, talking with friends or family members, journaling, practicing relaxation techniques, practicing gratitude, receiving counseling, reading a book, enjoying nature, and so on.
Daily plan, or what you’re like when you’re well: This is the routine you should follow every day to help yourself stay well. You can also look at this section as a description of what you do and how you feel on a day-to-day basis when you are mentally well.
Stressors (also called triggers): These are external events and situations that might make you feel uncomfortable if they happen to you. Although it’s normal to be upset by these things, they can be detrimental to our wellness if we don’t have some method of dealing with them. A few common examples might include having someone argue with you or receiving bad news.
Early warning signs: These are internal, subtle indications that you are beginning to feel worse. For example, you might feel more irritable then normal, sadder than normal, or you might find yourself replaying an upsetting event in your mind.
When things are breaking down: These signs occur when you are feeling much worse than normal and are nearing a state of mental and emotional crisis. Some examples include feeling sad or angry all the time, problems at work or in school, problems in your relationships, or even hallucinations.
Crisis plan: If your mental health deteriorates to the point that you are in crisis, you may not be able to make good decisions for yourself during that time. Your crisis plan identifies who should make important decisions for you and gives instructions about the types of assistance you do and do not want. Some of the details included in a crisis plan are: who should and should not assist with your care, which medications and treatments are preferred and which are not acceptable, what you do and do not want from your supporters during a crisis, and how they will know when you’re able to take care of yourself again.
Post-crisis plan: This section lays out tasks and timelines for healing and returning to everyday life after a mental health crisis. This plan can be started prior to a crisis, but it will likely need to be completed or adjusted as you are beginning to recover from the crisis, as you should then have a clearer picture of what you need to do for yourself to get well.

How to Assemble Your Own WRAP

The nice thing about WRAP is that it isn’t too difficult to begin putting together a plan of your own. The WRAP website provides a variety of tools and resources you can use to start creating your own WRAP, including several reasonably-priced textbooks and workbooks. However, it’s also common to work with a behavioral health professional as you put your plan together. “Some people have the support of a therapist, or they can use it with a peer recovery specialist,” Carman says.

Although your WRAP should follow the basic structure laid out above, the details of each section should fit your personality and specific life circumstances. “What I love about the WRAP plan is that you, the person, the individual, get to identify what needs to go in it,” Carman explains. Even when she’s assisting a client with creating their WRAP, she is careful to act only as a guide and sounding board, ultimately leaving the final decisions to them. “I’m just there to help that person navigate the plan and identify their wellness tools, and that’s empowering,” she says.

When working on your WRAP, it’s important to remember that nothing is set in stone. In fact, you should expect the information in your plan to change as your life circumstances change. According to Carman, this is a normal part of keeping your WRAP up to date:

“Let me make this clear: this is a living, breathing document. Personally, I have a WRAP plan. I started my WRAP plan several years ago when I first got into mental health services myself. And since then, I have readdressed it over the years as I’ve gotten a job, as I’ve gotten better, as I’ve gotten married—every change in my life. Because those sections—triggers, early warning signs, when things are breaking down—all of those things are constantly changing. So I’m constantly reinventing it to meet where my needs are at that time. Where your plan starts off today, more than likely it will not stay there, because you’re going to hopefully get better, and you may find out, ‘Hey, this isn’t triggering me anymore,” or, “Things are getting better, so that’s absolutely not an early warning sign for me now.’ It will continue to take a life of its own.”

Tips for Living by Your WRAP

Let’s say you’ve reviewed a number of WRAP resources, you’ve done some brainstorming or spoken with a behavioral health professional, and you’ve put together your own plan. What happens next? How can you apply this personal instruction manual you’ve created to monitor and manage your mental health?

According to Carman, it all begins with understanding what you’re like when you’re well. “I have a mental illness,” she explains. “I understand this from many standpoints. My personal perspective is this: How do I know when I’m symptomatic? I know because I have identified what I’m like when I’m well. That is the first and most important part.”

Carman continues,

“For me, one of my big things when I’m well is I love to get up, open my curtains, do my daily meditations, all that kind of stuff. Suppose I don’t do that for two or three days. That’s not a big issue; maybe I just don’t feel like it. If I’m looking at seven to ten days that I haven’t done it, I understand that something else is going on here. I’ve created my own gauge. And it’s not an open-ended thing, like, ‘Oh, it’s OK, it’ll be alright next week.’ I know I have a time frame. As another example, some people with depression may understand that, ‘If I lay around for two or three days, or four days, or even a week, that’s not the worst it’s been for me. Now, if I’m going into two weeks, now I need to do something different.’ So, the basis is to first identify what you’re like when you’re well, and then you figure out, what do I do for myself when I’m well? And that’s not necessarily every day, but it’s more days than not.”

The challenge with mental wellness is that even when we’re doing all the things we should to stay well, we can still take a turn for the worse. When this happens, we need to be extra vigilant about stressors/triggers. Carman says, “In the course of those days that I’m not feeling my best, I’m also trying to be aware of what triggers can create another barrier. Suppose I’m feeling depressed, I haven’t gotten up, and now I have some bad news. Now I have a compound issue.”

The most important thing to remember about stressors/triggers is that sometimes they can’t be avoided. In these situations, we need to be able to deal with them in a way that minimizes risk for our mental health. As Carman points out, your WRAP can also help you with this:

“What have I put in place for that trigger, and what can I do now that the trigger is here? Because the fact is that triggers are going to happen, and we don’t have to stop our lives because they happen. What I do is I go back and I figure out, ‘OK, when this happens, this is what I said I’m going to do.’ Because the WRAP plan is set up in this way: not only do you identify the trigger, you identify your action plan for the trigger. So it’s not just, ‘That’s my trigger, I don’t know what to do about it.’ That would not be very helpful. Once you identify those triggers as much as you can—and you’ll continue to do that, because as I said, this is a living, breathing document—’OK, this is what triggered me.’ Maybe anxiety, maybe fear. ‘OK, what am I fearful of?’ I’m going to ask the questions, I’m going to talk to somebody. And so now I’m pulling in my responsibility, what I’m accountable for. Because people can’t help you if they don’t know.”

WRAP is an easy-to-assemble, highly flexible, effective tool for managing your mental health on a day-to-day basis. As Carman Allen says, “The purpose of the WRAP plan is to help people identify how to get through mental health challenges. Because you talk to people all the time, and you say, ‘How did you get through that?’ And they say, ‘I don’t know, I just did it.’ The fact is, I need to know how I got through it, because more likely than not, I’m going to need to get through something else at another time. And the quicker I can pull that to my remembrance and start practicing that, the quicker I can get through it and get back to feeling better.”

We would highly encourage all our readers to take the time to put together a WRAP for use in their own lives. If you’d like assistance from a behavioral health professional, please give us a call at (888) 714-1927 to see if services at Cummins Behavioral Health might be right for you!

If you liked this article about the Wellness Recovery Action Plan, then you might also enjoy our blog on the Stages of Change model and how you can use it to make meaningful changes in your life!

Domestic Violence Intervention: How Rehabilitating Abusers Helps Victims

November 26, 2020 Mark Wilhelm

Domestic violence, also known as family violence or intimate partner violence, affects millions of individuals in the U.S. every year. The National Domestic Violence Hotline reports that 12 million women and men are the victims of sexual assault, physical violence or stalking by an intimate partner each year. In addition, 678,000 U.S. children were the victims of child abuse or neglect in 2018, according to the federal government’s 2018 Child Maltreatment Report.

One of the primary ways abusive behavior gets countered is through preventative action like education and advocacy. Government agencies, mental health care providers, and anti-abuse organizations spend much time and money working to stop domestic violence before it happens. But the fact remains that it still does happen millions of times a year, and for each person who suffers abuse, there is another person who has perpetrated it. What happens to the abuser after abuse has already occurred?

A domestic violence intervention program, also called a batterers intervention program (or BIP), is a learning curriculum aimed at rehabilitating individuals who have committed domestic violence. These programs challenge all types of abusive behavior and attempt to show participants that they alone are responsible and accountable for their harmful actions. Ultimately, intervention programs seek to protect potential victims by ending the cycle of abuse before it can start again.

Abuse Awareness and Accountability (or AAandA) is one such BIP that Cummins partners with in Montgomery County. To learn more about domestic violence intervention and why it matters, we spoke with Adam Myszak from AAandA and Mindy Frazee from our Crawfordsville outpatient office. Together, they explained how domestic violence intervention fills the gaps that prevention alone misses.

An Introduction to Domestic Violence Intervention

When we think about behaviors that constitute domestic violence, we often think of things like physical and sexual assault. However, domestic violence encompasses any and all behaviors that achieve control over another person through abusive methods. Besides physical and sexual abuse, a person may also commit verbal abuse, emotional abuse, mental abuse, spiritual abuse, or economic abuse.

Batterers intervention programs aim to root out and confront all forms of abuse. These programs teach offenders responsibility and accountability for their actions, emphasizing that their behavior was wrong and must change in the future. In Indiana, BIPs must be certified by the Indiana Coalition Against Domestic Violence (ICADV) and must consist of at least 26 weekly sessions lasting 90 minutes or longer.

According to Mindy, this intervention is intended to help both perpetrators and victims of domestic violence. She says, “While I can understand how it may be difficult to discuss offering an individual treatment based on some of their behaviors, I think it’s important to zoom out of the topic and think about how treatment and support can impact not only the individual coming in for treatment, but also those around the individual. For example, their children, partners, friends, colleagues, and community members. Each of us touches many lives, and by offering an individual support on breaking abusive or unhealthy patterns, we can see how systems can also be impacted.”

Adam agrees. “It’s important to get these individuals the tools and education to change their patterns of abusive behavior,” he says. “Without intervention, perpetrators will continue to use power and control and abuse their victims. We all agree that intervention is second to prevention, but if we can help stop the violence at any level, then we can help put victims’ safety first.”

Intervention in Action

A typical BIP class, such as those offered by Abuse Awareness and Accountability, consists of a lesson and group discussion facilitated by an instructor. The primary goal is to help participants identify abusive behaviors so they can begin to reinterpret their own actions in an objective light.

“For the most part, our clients do not see themselves as perpetrators and believe their actions were in the right,” Adam explains. “They have learned to blame the victim, and in that feel no guilt. They feel justified and have excuses, and they minimize their abuse because of this thinking error.”

According to Mindy, this cognitive error may be caused by numerous factors in a person’s life: “There are often patterns in behavior that either come from early childhood or from things picked up along the way in one’s life. It can also be from lack of needs being met (i.e. their own emotional deprivation, lack of financial resources, lack of proper nutrition). Over time the client, with the support of their treatment team, can recognize their abusive patterns and begin to challenge them and replace them with healthy responses.“

These behavioral patterns are often so deep-rooted that they do not change easily. As Adam mentioned, most people who have abused do not even believe that they need to change. “There is no excuse for abusing anyone, and that is why the Stages of Change start with pre-contemplation,” he says. “The critical thinking error that is present in these cases needs to be brought to the surface and held accountable. In order to intervene and make changes to behavior that has hurt and destroyed others, the client is challenged to first accept the behavior as abuse and then work though how to handle things without using power and control.”

As a person progresses through the program and starts to come to terms with their past behavior, they can benefit from additional support in the form of individual therapy or counseling outside of BIP classes. Mindy provides services of this type for some clients of AAandA. “If they are in classes with Adam, then I like to explore what class was about that week and support them in processing their experience and how it applies to them on an individual level. And whether they’re in the class or not, I often support clients on improving communication, disrupting old patterns of thinking and acting, boundary setting, and emotion regulation,” she explains.

The Gift of a Second Chance

As we have said, the primary duty of any domestic violence intervention program is to protect victims of violence. If a person who has committed abuse can be persuaded to change their behavior, then other people will be protected from future instances of abuse. However, these programs also offer abusers a chance to change for the better.

Again, the most challenging part of rehabilitation is convincing the person that they have a problem. The group framework of a BIP class helps with this. “Working through the learned and chosen abusive behavior in a group setting allows for clients to let down their wall of resistance and let in that idea: ‘Do I have a problem, or am I abusive?’ ” Adam says. “Once the client can take accountability without any minimizing or blame shifts for their behavior—100% accountability that no matter what, their actions were wrong—then partnering with individual therapeutic services is critical. At that stage, the therapist has a willing client ready to do some work on themselves and not resist the therapeutic work because ‘it’s somebody else’s fault.’ “

Mindy agrees that much of this work is best done in individual therapy, with the support of a trained therapist: “If we know certain things upset us, or if we can recognize when we feel fear, shame, confusion, or we become agitated, we can work on identifying ways to decrease reactions that lead to abusive behaviors based from these difficult emotions and increase responses that can lead to healthier behaviors by acknowledging the emotions. When given a chance to explore the self in a safe, nonjudgmental space, then the opportunity to grow and find new ways to cope and live a life with more meaningful relationships, including the one with the self, is possible.”

Making personal changes of this magnitude is difficult, but as Adam explains, BIPs such as AAandA have been proven successful at creating this change in their clients. Therefore, evidence-based intervention combined with individual therapy can provide a second chance for both perpetrators and victims of domestic violence.

“As our program is the largest certified program for perpetrator services in the state of Indiana by the Coalition Against Domestic Violence, I think that we offer such a curriculum because we know the possibility of change is apparent, and the only way we can keep victims safe is to offer the opportunity,” Adam says.

Cummins Behavioral Health is proud to support Abuse Awareness and Accountability in its mission to protect victims of domestic violence and reform those who have committed abuse. As Mindy Frazee puts it: “When you have two entities passionate about what they do for the communities they serve, it is priceless. Clients who are able to engage in both AAandA and therapy will know they are on a solid path toward recovery.“

If you are interested in learning more about batterers intervention programs for yourself or someone else, we encourage you to visit the Abuse Awareness and Accountability website and look into their classes available throughout Indiana. Classes are open to court-mandated as well as voluntary participants, and you can sit in on a session for free to see if the program might be right for you. Recovery and rehabilitation from domestic violence is possible!

Explaining Flow: How “Getting in the Zone” Can Help with Mental Wellness

November 25, 2020 admin

Have you ever been “in the zone” with a project? Or you sat down to do something you love and somehow the ideas just seemed to come to you on their own?

There’s a word for that: “flow.”

There’s been a lot of research about flow and “flow state,” but happiness expert Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi first coined the term 40 years ago and has been doing research on it ever since.

As a provider of behavioral health services, we’re interested in how flow and mental health are related. There are positive effects of flow aside from simply being more productive; because of that, we investigated how you can work on getting to flow state with your passion projects.

What Is Flow?

According to Csikszentmihalyi’s research in 1990, flow is “a state in which people are so involved in an activity that nothing else seems to matter; the experience is so enjoyable that people will continue to do it even at great cost, for the sheer sake of doing it.”

While someone is in this state of flow, “There’s this focus that, once it becomes intense, leads to a sense of ecstasy, a sense of clarity: you know exactly what you want to do from one moment to the other; you get immediate feedback,” Csikszentmihalyi said in a 2004 Ted Talk.

Flow state has been called many things by many people, including artists, creatives, athletes, and musicians. They all report these same feelings of being hyper-focused and having clarity—as if the ideas and actions weren’t from their own thoughts, but some external force.

Positive Psychology succinctly lists eight defining characteristics of flow state:

Complete concentration on the task
Clarity of goals and reward in mind and immediate feedback
Transformation of time (speeding up/slowing down)
The experience is intrinsically rewarding
Effortlessness and ease
There is a balance between challenge and skills
Actions and awareness are merged, losing self-conscious rumination
There is a feeling of control over the task

Someone doesn’t have to experience all eight characteristics to be in flow, but they will experience at least one and probably more.

What Does Flow Have to Do with Mental Health?

When people experience flow state, they are happier and more satisfied with life. The BBC reports that “flow is associated with subjective well-being, satisfaction with life and general happiness.”

People who can achieve flow state are not only more likely to be happy, but also less likely to experience the negative side effects from unmanaged mental health issues: “The thoughts and feelings that generally cloud our minds, such as stress, worry, and self-doubt, take a back seat when we achieve a flow state” (Headspace).

These are certainly encouraging ideas, and recent neuropsychology studies have shown that the brain is actually changing during flow state. Researcher Arne Dietrich notes that the prefrontal cortex, which normally controls our complex cognitive processes like self-reflection and conscious state of mind, seems to work differently during flow state.

His research shows, “In a state of flow, this area is believed to temporarily down-regulate in a process called transient hypofrontality. This temporary inactivation of the prefrontal area may trigger the feelings of distortion of time, loss of self-consciousness, and loss of inner critic. Moreover, the inhibition of the prefrontal lobe may enable the implicit mind to take over, allowing more brain areas to communicate freely and engage in a creative process.”

When someone experiences flow, they might feel like time passes differently, feel less inhibited by their inner critic, and be less self-conscious. Dietrich’s scientific findings line up with Csikszentmihalyi’s eight defining characteristics of flow state. Moreover, some of the problems faced during times of mental health crisis include harsh internal criticism and extreme self-consciousness. Therefore, getting into flow state could help people become better able to handle mental health challenges and ultimately increase mental wellness.

How to Get into Flow State

While flow state seems obviously desirable, it’s not always an “easy” goal to achieve. As artists know well, “there’s a stereotype that writers and creatives can enter the zone at will—that we sit down at our laptops and the world melts away” (BBC).

There are conditions you can create to make flow state more likely, but unlike a light switch, you can’t always turn it on and off. You must know yourself and what your optimal environment is in order to start creating the perfect conditions.

The BBC notes, “We are more likely to access the flow state when engaged in tasks we’ve already practiced.” So it helps if you are doing something you’re already familiar with.

The wellness app Headspace notes four conditions that need to be met to achieve flow state:

You need to care about the task at hand
The activity, job or task cannot be too easy or too difficult
Optimally, the activity should be something that you are good at
Your mindset surrounding the task should be focused on the journey, not the destination

Don’t let the short list deceive you—it’s a near-perfect combination that gets you to flow state. Looking at the conditions, it makes sense why creatives are thought to be able to turn on flow state at will. It also makes sense how athletes can enter flow state even though they’re doing something completely different than creatives.

If this list seems hard to accomplish, don’t be discouraged just yet. There are also some things you can do that will help you get to flow state: “Do something you love, create a ritual, choose your most important task, identify your peak creative and productive times, & eliminate distractions.”

Creating an environment that’s predictable and free of distractions can really help you change your mindset and delve deeper into your passion project.

Ultimately, flow state can greatly benefit your mental wellness through added happiness and lessened stress and anxiety. Not to mention the positive boost you will get from being so productive.

If you’re struggling with mental wellness, we would encourage you to do some self-reflection. Figuring out your passions and how to make daily or weekly time for them can be a great help in making positive mental health changes in your life.

If you need help figuring out how to manage your mental wellness, Cummins Behavioral Health offers many types of therapy and counseling services. From individual therapy to group therapy options, our skilled professionals can help you improve your mental health. They could even help you discover your passion so you can get to flow state and take advantage of the benefits. If you’re interested in getting help, call (888) 714-1927 today. You can lead a happy and balanced life!

Interested in more wellness-related topics? Here are some other blog posts you might enjoy!

How to Spot and Respond to Cyberbullying, a Growing Problem for Children and Teens

November 23, 2020 admin

In a world where technology is a dominant feature in most of our lives, it would seem that bullying would be a thing of the past. Everyone’s on their phones now, especially amidst a global pandemic, so kids are minding their own business…right?

Unfortunately, this is not the case. Cyberbullying runs rampant throughout the maze of technology kids have access to and are using on a daily basis. The bullying hasn’t stopped—it’s gone viral.

As a provider of school-based behavioral health services, we’re worried about the negative effects of cyberbullying. We know this form of bullying is harmful, so we want to make sure caregivers can spot the signs to get help for the children in their lives.

What Is Cyberbullying?

Much like the traditional bullying you see in movies or might have experienced growing up, cyberbullying includes name calling and mockery. It goes further, though, in the extensive number of ways kids can communicate with each other.

According to the National Bullying Prevention Center, “Cyberbullying is the use of technology to repeatedly and intentionally harass, hurt, embarrass, humiliate, or intimidate another person.” This includes laptops, cell phones, and tablets—basically anywhere someone can access the internet. It’s particularly tricky because there is so much technology in so many places that it almost makes bullying easier.

As to what the bullying actually includes, StopBullying.gov, a website run by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, says it best: “Cyberbullying includes sending, posting, or sharing negative, harmful, false, or mean content about someone else. It can include sharing personal or private information about someone else causing embarrassment or humiliation.” This might mean vicious insults or hurtful comments, sharing an embarrassing photo, or even distributing a home address and phone number—a practice called doxing.

How It Differs from Traditional Forms of Bullying

There are many similarities between traditional physical bullying and cyberbullying. Bullies are notorious for being relentless and persistent. Some common reasons children are bullied include: socioeconomic status, sexual orientation, and even smaller things like what hobbies they enjoy.

While bullying and cyberbullying are similar, there are many problematic elements of cyberbullying that make it harder to detect and deal with. For instance, with technology available 24/7, a cyberbully can harass a child not just while at school, but also on social media and video games. In some cases, it may feel hard to ever get away from cyberbullying because technology keeps everyone so connected.

Cyberbullying can also be anonymous and reach a much wider audience. If a cyberbully shares an embarrassing photo all over the internet and social media, it could “go viral.” This not only creates a permanent paper trail of embarrassment for the child being bullied, but also creates a situation from which the child may not be able to escape, even as they grow older and mature.

What’s worse is that the cyberbully may create fake profiles or be completely anonymous when performing the cyberbullying. This makes it harder to track and creates an environment where it’s easier to be much more hurtful with much less remorse due to the lack of perceived consequences.

A final key difference between traditional bullying and cyberbullying is that cyberbullying can be hard to detect. Students use technology in and for class and assignments. They also communicate with friends and family using technology. There will, at some point, be a time where parents, guardians, and teachers can’t monitor children at every moment, especially during a global pandemic when so many parents and teachers are already juggling eLearning and new work-from-home environments.

Cyberbullying does a lot more mental and emotional damage before adults begin to see the effects than traditional physical bullying. If a child is getting physically harmed at school, it probably leaves a mark. Unfortunately, in the digital world cyberbullying does long-term damage to mental health before anyone recognizes what’s going on and is able to intervene.

Long-Term Effects of Cyberbullying

With so much cyberbullying occurring, there are mental and emotional long-term effects. Researchers note, “Victims of bullying are at significantly increased risk of self-harm or thinking about suicide in adolescence. Furthermore, being bullied in primary school has been found to both predict borderline personality symptoms and psychotic experiences, such as hallucinations or delusions, by adolescence. Where investigated, those who were either exposed to several forms of bullying or were bullied over long periods of time (chronic bullying) tended to show more adverse effects.”

Victims of bullying face a higher risk of many serious consequences from bullying—from serious mental health disorders to much higher risk of suicide. In fact, suicide rates in children and adolescents have doubled since 2008.

Aside from the obvious mental and emotional strain, there can also be physical effects from cyberbullying. According to recent research, “Children who were victims of bullying have been consistently found to be at higher risk for common somatic problems such as colds, or psychosomatic problems such as headaches, stomach aches or sleeping problems, and are more likely to take up smoking. Victims have also been reported to more often develop internalising problems and anxiety disorder or depression disorder.”

If you’ve been bullied, you’ll likely recall that showing weakness to bullies seems to push them further into their habits and bring more suffering and increased bullying into your life. For this reason, many children who are being bullied are more likely to withdraw from their daily lives and internalize their fear.

According to researchers Dieter Wolke and Suzet Tanya Lereya, “Bullying rather than other factors explains increases in internalising problems.” There are then physical consequences of this internalization, like more common colds and headaches, which can seem unrelated.

Spotting the Signs of Cyberbullying

We know that cyberbullying is a problem—a big one. And it’s not going away anytime soon. We also know that it can be hard to detect. After all, we can’t monitor every child all the time.

So what signs can we look for that might indicate cyberbullying is occurring? The Cyberbullying Research Center has a very helpful list:

Unexpectedly stops using their device(s)
Appears nervous or jumpy when using their device(s)
Appears uneasy about going to school or outside in general
Appears to be angry, depressed, or frustrated after going online (including gaming)
Is oversleeping or not sleeping enough
Becomes abnormally withdrawn from friends and family members
Shows an increase or decrease in eating
Seems regularly depressed
Makes passing statements about suicide or the meaninglessness of life
Loses interest in the things that mattered most to them
Avoids discussions about what they are doing online
Frequently calls or texts from school requesting to go home ill
Desires to spend much more time with parents rather than peers
Becomes unusually secretive, especially when it comes to online activities

Many signs involve unusual behavior with technology. When a child who loves being connected stops wanting to be involved with activities online or games they previously loved to play, it’s odd and something might not “feel right” with how they normally act.

There are also signs involving relationships with the people they care about. Sometimes children who are being bullied push away from their peers and closer to parents and siblings. But sometimes they begin to pull away from everyone and lose interest in relationships, as well as passions they used to love.

The bottom line is that cyberbullying is serious, and although it’s harder to detect than more traditional physical bullying, there are signs parents and guardians can and should watch for. Knowledge is power, especially in the digital age where so much information is readily available to learn.

We would encourage you to check on the children closest to you—whether your own children, nieces and nephews, grandchildren, or children of friends. The kids need you more now than ever before, although they might not say it out loud. Regular and open communication about bullying and its negative effects can really help children not just for their own sake, but also so they know what to look for when they see it happening to others. Help them help themselves.

If you find that a child close to you is being bullied, therapy can help. Cummins behavioral health partners with many school districts throughout central Indiana to provide quality mental health therapy for children in the school-based environment. If you have questions or are worried your child might be experiencing cyberbullying, call (888) 714-1927 today. Early intervention can save lives!

If you’re concerned about other challenges to children’s mental health especially during the COVID-19 pandemic, we recommend also reading our blog on child abuse prevention below!