SOUTH Africa’s schoolchildren are in the grip of a mental health crisis, with many turning to suicide and self-harm to cope with emotional pain.
The cause, experts say, is bullying, which has reached epidemic levels. Reports suggest that between 40% and 75% of pupils fall victim to it at some stage. One organisation says the situation is so dire that at least 11 children take their own lives each day.
Dr Alicia Porter, a board member of the South African Society of Psychiatrists (SASOP), says bullying can also intersect with race, ethnicity and socioeconomic status, with children from disadvantaged backgrounds more likely to experience bullying in diverse, multi-ethnic environments.
“We’re not just dealing with bruises anymore,” says Porter.
“I work with children and families, and there’s just been such a significant increase,” she says. “Before, bullying would be contained just in that environment. But with this now intersecting with the digital space, things can go viral at the click of a button, and once it’s out there, you might delete it, but it cannot stop the spread.”
Porter refers to a study by the Children’s Institute, which found that 40% of school-going children in the country have experienced some form of bullying.
She says primary and high school pupils are anxious, depressed, and in some cases suicidal. When bullying is compounded by digital shame, the psychological damage can be lifelong.
“It’s no longer limited to fists and name-calling; voice notes, group chat exclusions, photo manipulation and public shaming via platforms such as Instagram, WhatsApp and TikTok create humiliation that leaves the child feeling even more vulnerable and helpless. For many victims, there’s no escape.”
Porter warns that bullying has led to increased rates of anxiety, depression, substance use, and even suicide.
“It’s like almost a pandemic of unkindness that has been unleashed,” she says. “Kids are making videos of kids being bullied, and while that sort of exposes what happened, we never really think about the victim and the shame and what that might do to their mental health.”
More worrying, says Porter, is that schools often don’t have clear or consistent ways of dealing with bullies, or even policies in place.
“So oftentimes, the victim is further traumatised by interacting with the school system, and then they’re made to feel even worse, they are made to blame, or they’re not taken seriously.”
She recalls one case in which a school decided a 10-year-old child who had been bullied must be sent to a hospital for 21 days.
Bullying, she says, is one of the main reasons why children self-harm.
“They’re in distress so they cut themselves. They don’t want to go to school, or their marks start to suffer, or you see a change in their behaviour. So we react to the behaviour without really understanding what might be the underlying reason.”
The trauma doesn’t end when a child leaves school, but follows them into adulthood, she warns.
“Mental health issues don’t start in adulthood. You start developing risk factors in childhood,” Porter says, calling it a “silent, seeping wound.”
But while the victim is traumatised, the bully often needs help too.
“Bullies are also victims of trauma, neglect, or violence at home,” says Porter. “They target those they perceive to be weaker to elevate their social standing and to fit in.”
Children from disadvantaged communities, or who face differences in race and ethnicity, are especially vulnerable. Girls and boys are both at risk, but the forms of bullying differ.
“With boys, it’s definitely more overt. So they are more victims of physical bullying, verbal bullying. Whereas with girls, it’s a lot more subtle — exclusion, name-calling, spreading rumours, isolating them. Girls are more likely to be targets of relational or verbal bullying.”
Porter doesn’t believe banning digital devices is the answer.
“We’re going to need to learn how to navigate rather than just take it away, because what does that do? It just buys us maybe a little bit of time. The digital age has arrived, and as parents, it’s uncharted territory. We can’t phone a friend or your grandma and ask her, how did you do this? We’re making up the rules as we go along, but we do need to make up rules. But we haven’t — and so it’s kind of exploded.”
She says most of her patient referrals come from teachers and has advocated for them to be trained to handle bullying and mental health issues.
“It only takes one child to lead the charge, but peer pressure turns cruelty into performance,” she says.
Despite laws protecting children, many schools lack consistent policies, training, or accountability, particularly in rural or under-resourced areas.
“This is a crisis hiding in plain sight,” warns Porter. “The emotional violence of bullying is as real as any physical wound. And unless we intervene now with urgency, compassion and a commitment to justice, we are failing an entire generation.”
Danie van Loggerenberg, CEO of the National Centre for Child Protection (NCCP), says mental health complications among children are the highest they’ve ever been.
“Eleven children die by suicide every day,” he says.
According to van Loggerenberg, up to 83% of pupils will be bullied at some stage, and because children often feel they have no one to turn to, many are turning to ChatGPT for help.
He says bullying has evolved into a digital battlefield, with children creating “shade rooms” and “channels” on WhatsApp where they run polls on who is “hot or not”, complete with victims’ photos.
Their research shows that 160,000 children skip school every day because of bullying. About 90% of bullying is child-on-child, and boys are more likely to be physically violent, while girls can be far more cruel.
“That’s why you won’t get a movie called Mean Boys — only Mean Girls,” he says.
Adeshini Naicker, Director of Childline KZN, says while physical bullying is more common in primary school, emotional and psychological abuse, including cyberbullying, intensifies in high school.
“With the rise of social media, emotional bullying now extends beyond the classroom, making it harder to escape and more damaging over time. Effective prevention needs to start early, involve schools, parents, and communities, and address both physical and emotional forms of harm,” says Naicker.
The Department of Education could not be reached for comment.
