Occupational Violence/Bullying in Education and Juvenile Justice, and Assessment of the Impact from these Events

As was argued in earlier chapters in this book, the evidence indicates that both the incidence and the severity of occupational violence are increasing across industrialized countries, particularly for workers who have significant levels of face-to-face contact with their clients or customers. Education workers — and those who provide other forms of care to adolescents — are not immune to these risks. There are two key themes in this chapter that relate to the experiences of occupational violence/bullying among education sector workers: (a) The primary focus is identification of the risks of occupational violence faced by those who work with adolescents, for example, while providing educational or other forms of care and support. The discussions begin with a brief review of the international research literature. Evidence is then presented from two of our recent research studies. (b) The second core focus of this chapter is assessment of the extent of emotional stress/injury/impact following an occupational violence/bullying event. It has long been assumed that those who suffer a physical assault are more likely to be emotionally traumatized by the experience vis-a-vis those who are merely verbally abused or bullied. Until now, insufficient objective and quantifiable comparative data have been available. However, as we have now conducted a series of studies in different industries, comparative data are available (see: latter part of Chapter 4, and Chapters 6 and 7). In recent studies, we have been measuring the extent of emotional consequences and have identified some inter-esting features. Data will be presented from a series of our studies that support the hypothesis that the emotional/stress impact from occupational violence/bullying events is not necessarily correlated with the physical severity of the incident.