Being in high school is like living in the wild. There’s predators, prey and people who stalk the rest of the wilderness. The predators are bullies, the prey are victims and the stalkers are witnesses. If we add all of those people together, we have what’s known today as the typical United States high school. In my opinion, that’s not something to be proud of. People are dying because some of our fellow classmates find it amusing to make fun of others. My question is, how do we make it stop?

Tyler Long, a student from Massachusetts who suffered from Asperger’s Disorder, committed suicide in 2010 because he was bullied. “His classmates picked on him for something that he couldn’t change,” Tyler Long’s mother, Tina Long, told The Christian Science Monitor of Boston, Massachusetts. Rachel Ehmke, another suicide victim from Minnesota, was supposedly bullied to death because of a text message that was sent around school. Investigations showed that the text was sent from her own house, possibly by Rachel herself. Nobody really knows who sent the message, but everyone knows that Rachel was in fact bullied, and bullying played a role in her suicide says Richard Meryhew of the Star Tribune in Minneapolis. According to Suicide Prevention, Awareness and Support, a non-profit association, one in every three students from the ages 12-18 reported being bullied in 2009. Only eight years earlier, 14% of students reported being bullied. In 2005, Suicide Prevention, Awareness and Support reported of 32,637 teen suicides. Of those, 25,907 were men. The other 6,730 were women. All of these people were considered to be victims of either bullying or depression.

Most people don’t believe depression is a real disorder, but it is. In a lot of cases, medication is required. It depends on what type of depression is involved. The most common depression in the U.S is chronic depression. Chronic depression, also known as dysthymia, is very common, but it’s not very severe. Most describe it as a depression that lingers for about two years, possibly more. People experience stages of major and minor depression throughout the period. Now, think of what it would be like to be someone suffering from depression and also being bullied at the same time, not fun. Fraser Coast Chronicle in Australia writes, “Most young people today who attempt suicide have mental health problems, especially depression… When young people are depressed, they may feel hopeless or in despair.” It was also said that misuse of alcohol and drugs increase the risk of teen depression and suicide. If a friend or loved one is having symptoms of depression be sure to let a responsible adult know. If bullying is involved, stand up to the bully before telling an adult. It’s surprising how much it helps to stand up to a bully.

My best friend since preschool lost his father when he was young. It’s always hurt him, but he’s always chose not to let it pull him down. One day last fall, a fellow classmate of ours thought it would be funny to make fun of him for not having a father. The sad thing is, nobody chose to stand up and say something. Everyone just sat there. When I heard about it, I had to do something. I went up to the bully after talking to my friend and asked why he would say such a thing. His reply? “He said something to me first.” It shouldn’t matter what happened before harsh words were said, nobody should ever make fun of anyone for anything. My little sister experienced a year of very harsh bullying. A girl in her grade decided that she didn’t like my sister, which is fine. The problem with the situation was: instead of just ignoring my sister or telling her she didn’t like her, she decided to harass and vandalize her. My little sister was 12 years old, as was the girl who harassed and bullied her. There’s no words to describe the feeling of seeing your younger sister walk through the front door with tears streaming down her face. She thought staying home from school would make it all go away, it didn’t. Her hater had brought a group of people together to call my sister and leave her hateful voicemails. They had no idea what my sister was going through.

There’s no way to know what another person is going through. They could be experiencing family problems, financial problems, school troubles, or they could be trying to cope with the lost of a loved one, like my friend. The saddest thing about what happened between my classmates is, nobody stood up and said that’s enough. Debby Abe included these statistics for The News Tribune in Tacoma, Washington,: bullies represent 6% of all students, victims count for 9% and left over 85% are witnesses of the harassment. Personally, I find that pathetic. Standing up to bullies shouldn’t be as hard as most make it seem.

In my opinion, bullying needs to end. Organizations spend millions of dollars on suicide, and bully prevention. These days, most teens are just throwing it all away. With drugs, alcohol, and weapons at our fingertips, suicide is now the second leading cause of death, to teens and adults, in the United States. I guarantee 50% of those suicides are caused by bullying. The wilderness is a crazy place. Predators only kill for pleasure, prey flee to stay alive, and the stalkers, they just hide in the background. The only difference between the wilderness and high school is, in the wild, the stalkers will eventually lurk out of the darkness to confront the predator.