Contribuições da Psicologia positiva para a compreensão e intervenção no fenômeno bullying

Abstract

The present Master Degree thesis aimed to study interventions on bullying in childhood. It is organized in two separated studies in article formats. In the first paper, a systematic literature revision is presented about studies on bullying interventions in childhood, published in the years 2002 to 2013 and taken from MEDLINE, LILACS, SCIELO, ASP (EBSCO), Oxford University Press, PsycINFO, ScienceDirect e Web of Science data bases. Nineteen scientific papers were analyzed and it was possible to observe that the majority of interventions described in these studies aimed to decrease bullying levels or behaviors as well as occurred inside schools, involving participants from the whole the school in a group format. It was also possible to identify the existence of a greater diversity in what refers to the measures about bullying in childhood and a lack of theoretical models as backgrounds to the development of these interventions. Besides that, few studies focused oneight-year-old or younger children and verified the association between bullying and other psychological phenomena. At study 2, the objective was to evaluate the effectiveness of an intervention based on Positive Psychology and Cognitive Behavior Therapy to children involved in bullying. Forty children from 10 to 12 years-old, students of public schools in Porto Alegre city, South Brazil, answered questionnaires about bullying, social skills, and depression symptoms. The intervention group included 26 children and the control group had 14. Data collection was held in schools, collectively, during eight days, one per week. Statistical analysis by Mann Whitney showed that before intervention (T1), the intervention group was more depressed symptoms (p<0,00) and the control group showed higher levels of social skills (p<0,02). After the intervention (T2), the groups were more homogeneous and the intervention group showed an increase of witness role in bullying (p<0,01). These results indicate that intervention can be considered effective to some variables related to bullying, mainly extreme victimzation and 15 bystander. The discussion of these results based on Positive Psychology approach is essential, due to its importance to prevention and mental health promotion in childhood.