The prevalence of bullying in Malaysia

According to National Health and Morbidity Survey (NHMS) 2017 conducted by the Health Ministry, it was estimated that 16.2% of Form 1 to Form 5 students were victims of bullying in general. The state with the most rampant case of bullying is Selangor with an estimated number of 72,344 students affected.

In most types of bullying, Selangor always came out on top with the highest number of bully victims except for the category of “Made fun of because of religion”. In this category, Sarawak was estimated to have 2,930 victims, while Selangor had 2,585 students affected.

Furthermore, the chances of one getting bullied for his/her race, nationality or color (10.6%) is higher than because of religion (4.7%). In these cases, male students were more likely to be bullied (11.9%) compared to females (8.9%).

When it comes to physical bullying, male students have a higher chance of being a victim at 10.6%. For the females, their odds of being physically bullied was lesser in 2017, at 4.6%.

On the other hand, female students were more likely to be body-shamed compared to the males, at 19.4% and 13.4% respectively. Body shaming is the second most pervasive type of bullying, 15.9% of Malaysian students were victims of bullying.

The state with the most cases of body-shamed victims is Selangor, probably because of being a huge state. Thus, its students are more likely to be exposed to body expectations portrayed in the media.

Overall, the amount of bullying cases in Malaysia is at an alarming rate. At least one out of ten students was a victim of bullying in 2017.