Big Bully

Marion Scher, award-winning journalist, author and media consultant, has written much about mental health over the last 28 years. She received a Rosalynn Carter Mental Health Journalism Fellowship from the Carter Center in Atlanta in 2005 which enabled her to write Surfacing: people coping with depression and mental illness in 2021. As media consultant to SADAG, she is honoured to have been part of the movement to reach out through the South African media to enhance Rosalynn Carter's dream of helping to break the stigma of mental health.

Based on interviews in schools, workplaces and homes, this book tells the story of an epidemic of unkindness, uncovering the stories of bullies all around us. The online environment has given bullies a much wider range of tools to use to abuse their targets. Marion Scher tracks the links between bullying and mental health issues. As Marion says: 'I had to brace myself to hear the often heartbreaking and vicious stories from those who encountered torturous relationships. The big question I kept asking myself was, "How could you get involved with such a person?" But just who is that kind of person, and is it even possible to spot them?' She calls on the advice of a range of experts to help make sense of the bullies and their victims, with a range of advice to help manage the bully boss, the bully in school and the bully in a relationship. The book has stories, statistics, advice and lots of help to understand how bullies work. It is time for victims to call bullies to account and for schools, workplaces and society as a whole to put a stop to the tormentors.