The expert spoke about ways to distinguish bullying from conflict and help the child.

In Russia, school bullying remains one of the most common problems — up to 40% of children and adolescents face bullying. Andrey Nevryuev, an assistant at the Department of Pedagogy and Medical Psychology at the Institute of Psychological and Social Work at Sechenov University, told Izvestia on May 4, the International Day against Bullying.

"Bullying is always aggression, its purpose is to hurt, intentionally humiliate another person," he said.

According to the expert, unlike conflict, harassment is systemic and occurs when forces are unequal. Any child can become a victim, but more often it is someone who is different from the majority. Nevryuyev identified the main signs: isolation, refusal to communicate, frequent illnesses, complaints about school, as well as bruises or torn clothes.

"One of the signals is a sharp decrease in social contacts: the child avoids communication, goes online, answers the question: "How are you?" answers: "It's fine," but at the same time he is withdrawn and closed," the specialist explained.

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The expert stressed that it is unacceptable to shift responsibility to the victim, since this is classic victimblaming — the justification of the aggressor.

"In psychology, there is a concept of a "mechanism of alienation of moral responsibility." It turns on when a person does not want to attribute their immoral actions to their area of responsibility and finds excuses for them," he said.

According to him, aggression is often formed against the background of problems in the family or environment, and witnesses of bullying do not interfere out of fear of being in the victim's place. Nevryuev noted that the key role is played by the support of adults — parents, teachers and psychologists. In difficult cases, the expert did not rule out contacting specialists or even changing the educational environment. According to him, the main thing is not to ignore the problem and to intervene in a timely manner.

Timur Mutaliev, a psychiatrist and psychotherapist at Atlas Clinics, said on April 13 that prescribing antidepressants to children is possible if the symptoms of the disorder are expressed in such a way that psychotherapy does not work independently. Mutaliev also added that drugs are not prescribed at the first opportunity. If the problem is not critical, the first and main method of treatment should be to work with a psychologist or psychotherapist.