A Tragic Ending

Rejection. Homophobia.

11-year old Joseph Walker-Hoover, a sixth grader at the New Leadership Charter School, was found hanging by an extension cord after enduring relentless bullying from his classmates. The football player and boy scout had been ruthlessly teased despite pleas from his administration. Being called “gay”, the boy was hardly old enough to understand or identify his sexuality. There was no reason to indicate why he was to be considered gay. It was simply the fact that he was the target of his tormentors. Eventually their incessant bullying pushed Joseph to the limit as he ended his own life.

Most of us are left wondering, shocked and saddened by this news. Age 11? Shouldn’t children be enjoying a stress-free lifestyle, running around and looking forward to playing with their friends after school? What drives a young boy to the point of suicide?

Being in the most impressionable years of his life, Joseph was treated as an outcast, ostracized and targeted by his peers for no particular reason. He was excluded, rejected, and ignored by others. The psychological effects of rejection on people who are repeatedly ostracized by people over a long period of time results in a variety of problems including pain, illness, depression, suicidal thoughts, eating disorders, helplessness, and promiscuity. Their self-esteem then begins to suffer, making them feel worthless. Some even begin to see life as meaningless (Williams, 2001; Williams & Zadro, 2005). In suffering this constant rejection, people begin to develop a trait called rejection sensitivity, which is a tendency towards expecting rejection from others and to becoming hypersensitive to possible rejection. This eventually leads to strained relationships and feelings of isolation and loneliness as they push others away in fear that they will be hurt. The damaged relationships only lead to more rejection and increasing sensitivity, resulting in a vicious cycle of despair and feelings of entrapment.

Rejection causes people to be less effective at processing complex information such as reasoning (Baumeister et al., 2002). Self-regulation is undermined where people become more impulsive and more inclined to do something that they might regret in the future but it appealing at the moment. For Joseph, this impulse was committing suicide. The rejection from his peers caused him to seek a form of relief and escape from all the pain. He settled on ending his young life.

http://abcnews.go.com/Health/MindMoodNews/Story?id=7328091&page=1