Ch. Master Greg Moody, Ph.D.

The Podcast:

Dr. Greg Moody (28:35):
These all go together. Sometimes you feel a little anxiety, might give you some abdominal pain, might give you some tension. Bullied people, 28%. So about three times. Feeling unhappy, 5%. Only about 5% the average person reports that they’re unhappy any given time. Now, these are kids that they studied. So we’re using kids as a number, maybe adults would be a little bit more than that. Kids that are bullied, 23%. That’s about five to one. Now here’s the two big ones, depression scale. So this is a scale where there’s two indicators, moderate and strong.
Dr. Greg Moody (29:33):
Now, moderate and strong. Moderate means they’re depressed, they’re not feeling good. This is what you think of as normal, it’s not good. It’s normal depression. Strong indicator. If you’ve ever taken a depression scale or a scale test, maybe you’ve had a major loss in your life or a divorce or a larger problem. You might have had your counselor give you a depression scale. And if you scored very high, they’re going to be talking about medication. There’s going to be a bigger issue that’s coming up. Strong is a very big deal. They might be talking to people that have strong depression issues about suicidal ideation. It’s a very severe depression. So moderate indication of depression, average person, 16%. So it’s depressed, but is not massively severe. It’s depressed. 16% people have some depression once in a while. Bullied people, 49%. That’s a big difference.
Sr. Master Laura Sanborn (30:48):
Big difference.
Dr. Greg Moody (30:51):
Yeah. Strong indication. Now remember, that’s severe. That’s a big deal. The average person, only 2%. That’s what you’d expect. I mean, this is a big deal. Most people don’t have this case. Only 2% of the population. Most people aren’t this depressed. People that are bullied, 16%. That’s eight times worse. People that are bullied have eight times more strong depression indication. That is severe depression. These kids, and again, this scale is for kids, are feeling really bad. So when you hear about kids that are bullied committing suicide, and you think, that’s a horrible tragedy, there’s a lot of them that are not doing that that are feeling really bad. Why? Remember what it’s like, the peer abuse. That’s what that’s like.
Dr. Greg Moody (31:57):
When you give advice to kids about, well, you should stand up for yourself. The ones that can stand up for themselves probably will. The ones that can stand up for themselves aren’t in this category. The ones that can stand up for themselves might figure it out on their own. They may feel bad, but they may figure it out on their own. It’s these guys that we need to help. Kids that are bullied or who are being bullied are more likely to be engaged because of these issues in other antisocial, violent or troubling behavior, they have all kinds of other issues along with this. So there’s a whole period of other things that we could talk about. This type of feeling that they’re going through is going to have some manifested results at the end as well. Let that sit there for a second. Anything to add, Master Sanborn?
Sr. Master Laura Sanborn (32:56):
No, that’s pretty overwhelming actually. Just the amount of difference is pretty stark.
Dr. Greg Moody (33:06):
Yeah. The amount of difference is, it really is a big deal. Next time we get together, what we’re going to talk about is the effects on bullying of the kid who bullies. So we’ll leave you with that today, but it’s not just the kid who’s being bullied or the adult who’s being bullied. It’s also the kid or the adult who’s doing the bullying. There’s negative effects for them too. So we’re not doing all this work just to help the person who’s being bullied. We’re also doing it to help the person who’s doing the bullying because it’s not in their best interests either. There are some positive benefits socially for bullying other people. And we’ll talk about why somebody would bully another person. It sounds weird that I would say that, that there’s some positive benefits. They look stronger in a social group and there’s some other things that happen.
Dr. Greg Moody (34:09):
However, in the long-term, there’s some negative things. There’s a lot of negative things about somebody who’s bullying, but it’s not in this long-term. It doesn’t work out in the short-term. It can be positive for them. And we’re going to talk about what happens with people when they do bully other people, what the effects of that are. And then as we go through this, what to do about it. I hope we covered some more myths and truths about bullying that you can digest a little bit here before we talk about this next. Anything to add, Master Sanborn, before we wrap up?
Sr. Master Laura Sanborn (34:46):
No, sir. I am still taking notes on all this myself. So I am pretty overwhelmed by that starkness and the difference between those two, for people who are bullied and people who are not. You always know that somebody who gets bullied doesn’t feel good, but not in so many ways.
Dr. Greg Moody (35:08):
Not the scope of how bad they might feel and the difference between that and what a typical kid feels that’s just going about their day.
Sr. Master Laura Sanborn (35:19):
Right.
Dr. Greg Moody (35:20):
Yeah. Or a typical adult. I can’t emphasize enough. This is not just kids. This is everybody, anybody who’s in a situation where they’re feeling like they’re being bullied is going to feel this way. My goal would be also that it helps you understand people who might be going through other abuse situations. That some of the scaling on this is applicable so that we can help everybody. All right, guys. Well, have a good day. Now we’re going to go out there and pay attention to what’s going on in the world around us till we talk to you next time.
Sr. Master Laura Sanborn (35:53):
Thank you, sir.
Dr. Greg Moody (35:55):
Okay. Bye everybody.

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