Scientific and pedagogical staff of the Department of Psychology and Pedagogy of the National University “Yuri Kondratyuk Poltava Polytechnic” led by Doctor of Psychology, Head of the Department, Professor Svitlana Yalanska, held a meeting of the psychological studio “Path to Success”, dedicated to such a common phenomenon as bullying, its manifestations, consequences and ways of prevention. Lecturers and students of two structural subdivisions of the university – future translators, psychologists and specialists in preschool education joined the active discussion on the causes of victimization, pressure and other typical signs of bullying in the youth environment. Due to quarantine restrictions caused by the spread of the global COVID-19 pandemic, the event changed its usual format, but this did not prevent the establishment of a constructive dialogue and fruitful professional communication between its partakers.
The main speaker of the event was Nataliia Zlatopolska, a social worker of the Poltava Regional Charitable Foundation “Public Health”, who spoke about the activities of the foundation aimed at combating various forms of violence. This Foundation has been working in the field of public health for over 25 years. One of the components of its activity is closely related to the prevention of the offenses and various forms of violence spread among pupils and students. During the meeting, the speaker told the audience about the identification of violence, and what constitutional rights are violated by it, spoke in detail about the typologies of physical, psychological, sexual and economic violence, domestic violence or violence at the place of study or work. According to Nataliia Zlatopolska, violence is any intentional act of a physical, sexual, psychological or economic nature committed by one person against another, if it violates the constitutional rights and freedoms of a citizen and is detrimental to the victim’s physical or mental health. Violence can also be defined as the act or omission of one person to harm another person’s health or sense of honor and dignity. Students learned about violence in the educational environment – bullying, its signs and main causes, the social structure of bullying (victim – persecutor (buller) – observer), the cycle of violence (III stages: “tension”, “incident of acute violence”, “Honeymoon”). The speaker also emphasized the main indicators of violence, described the typical persecutor (buller) and named the main types and forms of bullying: economic (phishing and carding), physical (physical violence, sexual bullying), psychological (social bullying, verbal bullying, electronic bullying or cyberbullying), social bullying or mobbing.
“There is a widespread prejudice that violence is harm to a person’s physical health, such as beating, but in reality there are many forms of violence – physical, economic, psychological, sexual, mobbing, bullying, cyberbullying, etc. Sometimes a person does not realize that they become victims of violence and do not know how to overcome it. It is extremely important to understand what factors go beyond normal communication and become an intrusion into a person’s personal space, which is why such educational activities must be constantly conducted in schools and higher education institutions, to teach youth the rules of behavior in difficult life situations,” – commented Doctor of Psychology, Head of Psychology and Pedagogy Department of Poltava Polytechnic, Professor Svitlana Yalanska.
Participants discussed in detail the most relevant issues today – e-bullying or cyberbullying and its varieties – sexting and online grooming, the main manifestations of violence – depression; suicidal ideation and threats to kill oneself; guilt for conflicts or injuries; the presence of psychosomatic complaints; narrowing of consciousness; inability to adequately assess the situation, one’s own future, one’s actions and the actions of others; the combination of suspicion with boundless gullibility; loss of social contacts with relatives and friends, acute feeling of/desire for loneliness/isolation; postponing the time of seeking help or refusing it or any external influence on the clarified and changing situation; disbelief in opportunities and changes for the better.
Students and lecturers of the Faculty of Humanities and the Faculty of Physical Culture and Sports of Poltava Polytechnic learned how a victim of bullying and their parents should act, where to turn for help, as well as about administrative and criminal liability for bullying.
At the end of the meeting, Nataliia Zlatopolska, a social worker at the Poltava Regional Charitable Foundation “Public Health”, shared the telephone numbers of services and centers to call in case of violence, and the head of the Department of Psychology and Pedagogy, Doctor of Psychology, Professor Svitlana Yalanska reminded that the university has a psychological service, as well as a trust email address for appeals about conflict situations conflict@nupp.com.
“The All-Ukrainian campaign “16 Days Against Violence” is lasting from November 25 to December 10, so students and lecturers of Poltava Polytechnic decided to join the discussion on the problem of violence and how to fight against it. Last year, as part of the work of the students’ scientific club “Philology” we held a roundtable discussion on human rights along with an event on how to combat various types of violence and bullying in everyday life as well as in professional and educational activities.
This year we changed the format a bit and turned to real professionals. Lecturers of the Department of Psychology and Pedagogy gladly helped us and organized an educational event dedicated to the topic of bullying. We would like to express our sincere gratitude to our colleagues and Nataliia Zlatopolska for the extremely informative and interesting training,” – thanked the guarantor of the specialty “Philology”, Candidate of Philological Sciences, Associate Professor of the Department of Germanic Philology and Translation of National University “Yuri Kondratyuk Poltava Polytechnic”, Anna Pavelieva.
Earlier, students and lecturers of psychology discussed how to organize living space in a pandemic, and lecturers and students of the Faculty of Humanities learned to deal with stress and restore psychological balance.
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National University “Yuri Kondratyuk Poltava Polytechnic”
