EFFECTS OF VERBAL HARASSMENT ON ACADEMIC PERFORMANCE OF

TECHNOLOGICAL VOCATIONAL SENIOR HIGH SCHOOL STUDENTS

A Research Paper Presented to the Faculty of

Senior High School

ST. CLARE COLLEGE OF CALOOCAN

In Partial Fulfillment

of the Requirements for the Subject

PRACTICAL RESEARCH 2

By:

AGBUYA, JOANNA E.

BUAMA, LOVELY VIEN B.

CANON, JAYSON B.

FRANCISCO, PAULO MILEN

GUIAPAL, JAMIL P.

MEDIANA, KARLO T.

QUINTERO, REYSHEL

STA. ANA, NECIA KENDY D.

VENCIO, ROLLY
 CHAPTER II

Review of Related Literature

Verbal abuse might not be as visible as physical abuse, but it can be just as

damaging. What makes this type of abuse so insidious is that the victim blames

herself, further weakening her self-esteem, instead placing the responsibility

firmly where it belongs – on the abuser. You can’t see the signs of verbal abuse

simply by looking at its victims. Unlike physical abuse, verbal abuse leaves no

bruises, visible scars or broken bones. But the victim suffer and bear emotional

scars. The partner of an abuser becomes confused.

Verbal abuse may be abvious or subtle, occasional or constant, but it is

always an issue of control, holding power over another. In most cases, the

abuser denies he is doing anything wrong. Usually, the abuse takes place in

private without witnesses. It often escalates over time.

It is also easy to think of abuse as physical or sexual, but verbal abuse is

more prevalent and can be just as traumatic. Many verbal abusers are masters

at manipulation and may appear to be highly charming, kind-hearted types. They

may even tell people that they are the innocent victim of their partner’s bad

behavior, which can make the rejection and isolation of abused person even

worse. It’s not easy to know whether you are in an abusive relationship or just a

bad one. It may be that your relationship is just going through a bad patch and

one or both of you are indulging at some negative behavior patterns. However,

abuse goes above and beyond these things that goes on for a long time. One

sign is that your afraid of the person you have the relationship with. Your dread

being alone with them or exposed to their words, and may feel controlled,

manipulated, anxious and desperate. You have probably started to doubt

yourself and your self-esteem may have taken a big knock.

According to the study of Patricia (2015), in the book of The Verbally Abused,

she identified the categories of verbal abuse. Some are really obvious, while

some are more indirect.

The first type of verbal harassment according to Evans is withholding which is

primarily manifested as a withholding of information and a failure to nshare

thoughts and feelings. In other words, the abuser will not let his or her partner
to share his or her thoughts or feelings. The second type is countering.

Countering means the victim of the abuser will let her partner to share certain

opinion or thought then the abuser will convince the victim that her feelings are

wrong. The third one is discounting. It is an attempt that the abuser denies that

the victim has any right to share his thoughts or feelings. The fourth one is

judging and criticizing. It is similar to accusing and blaming someone but it

involves a negative evaluation of the partner. Evans points out that ‘most of us’

are judgmental, critical and abusive. And the last example is very common,

name-calling. Although we all know what name-calling is, we will still discuss it

here what is it all about. Name-calling can be subtle. It consist in calling the

victim of the abuse a “bitch”, or other hurtful words.

Being verbally abused has a reason. Everything has a reason. Why is this

happening? Or what is the real reason behind the certain phenomena. People

gets abused by other because they believe they have the right to control the

person.
 According to the study of Hollis & Armitage (2007), 7% of calls per shift were

verbally abused. The most common sources were patients or emergency callers.

The vicitim who is verbally abused have a poorer mental health and the desire to

leave.

One of the reasons why verbal harassment is harmful is because we learn a

lot about ourselves in the context of relationship. If the people closest to us

habitually belittle us and dismiss our feelings, we begin to see ourselves in

insignificant ways. That is why awareness is a great first step in dealing with

verbal abuse.

Previous studies reveal that exposure to verbal abuse are associated with huge

amount of adult psychopathology and adjustment in structure of brain. In this

study, the author examined the symptoms and the effects of changing the

structure of the nervous system in young adulthood, of vulnerability to verbal

abuse to young adults. Approximately, peer and parental abuse has an equal

effect on this assessment. It is expressed in path analysis that peer verbal abuse
had the most important effect on the amount of symptoms during middle school

year. (Polcari & McGreenery, 2010)

Holly (2019) emphasize that the outcome of verbal harassment on children,

women and men follow the same assumption. It may cause the victim of verbal

harassment to have fear. Yet, victims may refuse that they’re having anxiety and

feelings of wanting to get away of the abuser. When the victim feels kindness or

love from the abuser, they know that it is brief and will disappear soon and

abuse may happen at any time. Victims are now living in a non stop state of

having hyper awareness, looking for indications of an approaching abuse. Victims

cannot trust anyone who surrounds them. Because for them, that is a very big

deal.

The outcome of verbal harassment and emotional abuse entwine because

verbally abusive comment that plays on the victims’ feelings. Emotionally, the

victims may feel being misunderstood, they may feel unimportant and having

fear of what may arise if he presses the issue. Is this how we want our loved

ones feels?
 To identify risk and protective factors associated with thinking about or

attempting suicide among youth involve in verbal and social bullying. The reason

for suicide attempts is that a person think they can do so when they have a lot of

problems. In logistic aggression models controlling for demographic and other

risk and protective factors history of self-injury and emotional distress was risk

factors that cross cut three bullying involvement groups. Physical abuse, sexual

abuse and mental health problem and running away from home where additional

risk factors for perpetrators was a cross cutting protective factor, whereas

stronger perceived caring by friends and by non parental adults protective

factors for some groups. The logical regression model comtrols demographics

and other risk factors for adolescents. Self-harm and emotional distress are

factors in the risk of physical abuse, sexual abuse and mental health problem.

(Borowsky & McMorris, 2013)

An exposure to verbal abuse from a child can affect and increased risk of

depression mood, anxiety and use of drug. A lack of health care, abandonment,

education, allowance, failure to enroll child in school or emotional, inanttention

to the child need for affection is the result of failure to provide needed

psychological care. (Rabi & Bolger, 2014)

The findings of Sarzoa & Urzua (2015) about the students who suffer from

abuse tend to be shy and are just sensitive to reactions. These victims tend to

give up on the work of these students do not try to study and in other activities

besides donning bulbs is a big problem as not only sufferers suffers of

oppression that inflicts negative bullying throughout life bullying can express

emotional weakness and suffering. Those who suffer from bullying between two

and nine times more likely to commit suicide than the one who cause sufferings.

Many young people suffer from low self-esteem due to bully.

We all hope that our parents are the ideal role models and treat us woth

respect, but unfortunately, that’s not always the case. Some kids grow up with

their mothers and fathers that can cause their children harm with the way they

behave. All parents are human, which means they have rheir flaws, but some

have deeper psychological issues that end up affecting how they treat their

children. But on the other hand, some parents guide their children whenever
they feel down about them being verbally abused. Not all parents treat their

children the way the abusers treat them.

If a parent suspected that his child is being associated in verbal harassment,

they play a major role in preventing and responding to verbal harassment. And

theres a distinct things that parents do on how to prevent it.

Based on the findings of Jovana Dalijevic (2014), the behavior patterns begin

at home. By teaching your child on how to have a good communication and

social skills at your home, your child may be successful in school. In addition to,

by talking to your child, you may her having a good communication to other

people. You may help her through asking how her day went, you may ask

questions about her school. What is the progress on her studies. Through this,

you may help her on how to improve her communicating skills in your childs’

school. At any time, you can suggest that they could have your service in their

classroom if possible. Parents should be observant when it comes to the behavior

of their child. They should be attentive also to know if their children got bullied

or if there are any signs of bullying. By teaching your child on how to have a
good communication and social skills at your home, your child may be successful

in school. Parents also provides guidance and need for their children to improve

their lives.

The parents wants to think about their child that are being bullied or even

more, we have facts that more than half of all children are important and

involved with it. Either as a commits, victims or witness so theres a good chance

that are need to deal with it. At the same time, at some point, if other children

are being bullied, there are things that the parents will do to help them. They

need to listen without getting angry or upset,, they need to learn how to put

their feelings aside in every situation that may come. Try to make them

understand what is the solution to their problem. Parents should be supportive in

every right decision that their children will make. Because being verbally abused,

they may have low self-esteem and their confidence level will lose because of the

hurtful words they might hear. (Sandra H., 2013)

The study of Novak (2012), states that role of the teachers in verbal

harassment is to take care of their students inside and outside of the school.
Being a professional teacher, they should take the responsibility of a child they

are teaching. They should include the safety of children, the health and also their

happiness. Teachers are aware that they are the role model of children in school

especially in teaching because they taught the children that education is

important. Educators do their best to support all of their students and care for

them. They wanted the best for their students that’s why they care for them and

it includes in their professional standards. Educators does not only have the

responsibility to report all the abuse but also guide their students to the right

path. They also be responsible in every behavior of their students who verbally

abusing their schoolmates.

There’s a big question that everyone ask, why does bullying happen? Bullying

occurs when socializing with one another. Students inegrate the values and

social norms from the school and wider community just to develop their

relationships. A student can harm another person just because they don’t like

that person. They don’t want that person to be around. And they just want to

make fun of that person. But others are not like this. They bully someone
because they experienced this kind of treatment before so they think that they

should do this to others because they want that person to know what is the

feeling of being bullied.

Bullying may have distrust, fear, misunderstanding, lack of knowledge and

jealousy. (Rico F, 2011)

Evans (2012), states that the most spontaneous way to respond to an abuser

is tp persuit to have an argument with him or her. Frequently, someone

adversely defines you as a liar and your response is to persuade that abuser that

his speculations are wrong. Therefore, you nsupposedly have a normal oppose

which is the abuser. But the truth is, you cannot have an argument with an

abuser.

The only efficient ways to limit verbal harassment is to seek for the abuser

everytime they strike. If someone blames you for doing what you cannot control,

just ignore what they have said. In this way, the abuser will feel that he or she is

irrelevant.
 Let’s just say that you have a friend who blames you for being late that will

end up criticizing you because of being last minute person not knowing that you

are trapped into something that you cannot control. Rather than argumenting

with him, calm yourself and say that it’s not your fault in the first place, because

you can’t control traffic.

By rejecting the abuser and straining to argue with them, you are letting the

abuser to know that he or she is irrational and that you are not going to impose

with that behavior. Some of them will learn how to change that kind of attitude

and some of them will not.