The simple answer is why not?
Active Bystandership is the “Art and science of reducing harm”. Within society harm comes from many sources including from poor behaviours, mistakes, and poor mental health. In many ways they are all connected and cannot be separated.
50+ years of social science research confirms that active bystandership can be trained.
In the 1980’s it was estimated that around 70% of abusive and harmful situations 3rd parties were present. People witness the build-up to situations; they witness the incident itself and often they are informed when harm occurs. There’s such power in engaging such an untapped resource.
We are all bystanders as we go about our daily lives. We witness situations that cause harm. Such harm may be directed towards a friend, colleague, a family member. It may be the case that any of these individuals may be causing harm to another.
Whilst most people like to think they would do something the reality is often very different. For many reasons people don’t intervene. Friends and colleagues feel they have let others down. This moral trauma is real and is long lasting.
Active Bystander (Peer Intervention) training can help people become more confident in intervening when they witness harmful behaviours, mistakes, or poor mental health.
The Bystander Approach works.
When someone intervenes, they signal disapproval for the behaviour on display. Not only does the ‘harm doer’ receive a message that their behaviour is not okay, but the action also helps other people to speak up. In turn this helps to change group norms.
Active bystanders reduce and prevent harm. They save lives and careers can be saved through early and effective intervention.
In many settings doing nothing is the established norm. We know this silence communicates a message that a behaviour is accepted. The result is harm continues. We at Cultivating Minds UK simply aim to break this cycle.
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