Still, a report of a young person who takes his/her own life and leaves a note pointing directly to the
suffering and pain they have endured because of bullying is shocking and heartbreaking. While a
young person’s death by suicide is a tragedy and both bullying and suicide-related behavior are serious
public health problems, our response to such situations must reflect a balanced understanding of the
issues informed by the best available research.
It is particularly important to understand the difference between circumstances being related to an event versus
being direct causes or effects of the event. To explore this idea, let’s look at a similar but much simpler example:
In the case of drowning deaths among
children, those who are not directly supervised
by a competent adult while swimming are
more likely to die by drowning than those
children who are directly supervised. While
the lack of adult supervision does not
directly cause a child to drown, it is a critical
circumstance that can affect the outcome of
the situation.
Just as with preventing deaths by drowning,
for bullying and suicide prevention, the more
we understand about the relationship between
circumstances and outcomes the better
decisions we can make about what actions to
take to prevent bullying and suicide-related
behavior.