Dr Lesley-Anne Ey: I think for children who are engaging in that behaviour, early intervention is not only going to help address the issues that they're actually dealing with that has contributed to them actually developing those behaviours, but also it's going to support their lifelong outcomes. If you engage in bullying behaviour, people might do what you want them to do out of fear, but you're not going to develop strong relationships and friendships that can be lifelong. If you are engaging in that type of behaviour, you don't know how to interact competently with other people, which is going to impact your lifelong outcomes. So it's that early intervention and helping these children to actually reshape their behaviours and understand their behaviours, understand why they're engaging in those behaviours and address those issues is going to be a lot better for those children's outcomes as they're going through their early years, middle years, adolescent years, and adult years.
So as the children who are experiencing bullying behaviour that can have really detrimental outcomes on their mental health, on their physical health, on their ability to build trusting relationships, to allow themselves to trust others. So it can impact on their long-term relationships, whether it be romantic relationships or peer relationships or work relationships. If they don't receive support relative to their mental health, if they are suffering depression or anxiety, it can lead into more severe impacts on their mental health. So early intervention is really important to be able to address the underlying issues.