Bullying at school: breaking the silence to prevent suffering

School has become a nightmare for 5-10% of schoolchildren in Switzerland. Victims of school bullying often suffer in silence and experience long-term consequences. Experts recommend boosting prevention in schools. “What are you doing here? You take up too much space. Go kill yourself!” The words are violent, extreme. Yet they used to be part of Loane Gosteli’s daily life: insults, taunts and threats turned her time at school, in a small village in canton Jura, into a living hell. “For nine years, I walked to school as slowly as possible with a knot in my stomach. I even pretended to be sick at times in order to stay at home,” says the young woman, now 20. When she got a mobile phone, the bullying became constant, through text messages or the internet. A weight gain following her parents' divorce when she was about six was the start of the young woman's ordeal. She became trapped in a vicious circle: “The more other students would mock me, the more weight I gained ...