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Abstract
There is considerable evidence that parental corporal punishment (CP) is positively associated with children’s behavioral and mental health problems. However, there is very little evidence addressing whether CP perpetrated by teachers or school staff is similarly associated with problematic student functioning. To address this gap in the research literature, data were collected from students in a locale where school CP continues to be widely practiced. Participants were 519 adolescents attending public or private schools in Puducherry, a city in eastern India. Students completed surveys assessing school CP, internalizing problems, social support, and resilience. The results indicated that 62% of the students reported experiencing school CP in the past 12 months, with males and those attending public schools being significantly more likely to report school CP than females and those in private schools. Youth who reported school CP reported more anxiety and depression. That relation was more pronounced in youth who reported family tension. Social support and resilience did not moderate the relations. The findings add to the substantial evidence about negative associations regarding the use of CP but in a new venue—the school, and provide some evidence for the need to change how students are disciplined in schools in India and elsewhere.
Corporal punishment (CP) of children—commonly defined as ‘any punishment involving physical force intended to cause some degree of pain or discomfort’ (Human Rights Watch, 2008, p. 23)—is now widely recognized as a problematic form of discipline. Children subjected to CP at home are at increased risk for a variety of mental health problems as well as compromised parent-child relations according to a recent meta-analytic review (Gershoff & Grogan-Kaylor, 2016). For example, children who are frequently hit by parents tend to develop aggressive behavior toward others and show symptoms of depression, anxiety, and other mental disorders (Afifi et al., 2012; Maguire-Jack, Gromoske, & Berger, 2012). The negative associations with parental CP have been replicated in dozens of studies with thousands of children, although the effect sizes vary depending on the outcome variable and study design (e.g., Ferguson, 2013; Gershoff & Grogan-Kaylor, 2016).
Despite the wealth of studies addressing associations between parental CP and child functioning, there is a dearth of empirical evidence on the impact of school CP on students. However, children and youth are frequently slapped, paddled, or hit by teachers and school administrators in many countries around the world (e.g., Bartman, 2002; Human Rights Watch, 2008; Middleton, 2008). Moreover, school CP continues to be legally sanctioned in 73 countries (Global Initiative to End All Corporal Punishment of Children, 2015).
Global Incidence of School CP
Corporal punishment is widely practiced in multiple countries. In a study of more than 2,000 middle and high school students in Egypt, 80% of boys and 62% of girls reported being hit by teachers (Youssef, Attia, & Kamel, 1998). In Israel, about 25% of students in grades 4 to 11 reported some type of physical maltreatment (grabbed, shoved, pinched, slapped, kicked, or punched) (Khoury-Kassabri, 2006). Similarly, in Taiwan, more than 20% of junior high school students reported they were slapped, hit, or beaten by their teachers (Chen & Wei, 2011). A study of South Korean adolescent students in three grades found that 24.3% students experienced CP in the previous year in the form of getting slapped around the face or head, hit on the thighs or hips with a cane or a broom (Lee, 2015). In the United States, CP is permitted in 19 states, with more than 150,000 incidents occurring in the 2010–2011 academic year; male students, minorities, and students with disabilities were most likely to be subject to CP (Gershoff, Purtell, & Holas, 2015).
School corporal punishment and mental health problems
Despite the prevalence of school CP and the extensive evidence that parental CP is associated with numerous mental health and other problems for children and adolescents (Gershoff & Grogan-Taylor, 2016), almost no research addresses the question of whether school CP is also harmful. We were able to locate only one unpublished study that addressed this link. Ogando Portela and Pells (2015), in a UNICEF funded effort, conducted a longitudinal study of some 2,000 children from Ethiopia, India, Peru, and Vietnam. They discovered that 8-year-old children who were hit at school reported feeling more shame than other children. When the students were 12-years-old, these children performed less well on mathematics tests compared to other children, after controlling for cognitive ability assessed when the youth were 5-years-old. Building on that effort, the goal of the present study is to investigate the occurrence of school CP and the degree to which CP is associated with mental health problems among students in India.
It is likely that many different variables can serve to moderate or mediate the relation between CP and student problems. The child depression literature indicates that two important potential moderators are social support and resiliency. Adolescents who report more social support and greater resilience are less likely to experience depressive symptoms (e.g., Dumont & Provost, 1999). Other variables may also play a role in the expression of internalizing problems, such as the quality of the student-teacher relationship (Baker, Grant, & Morlock, 2008) or more generally, the school climate (Kuperminc, Leadbeater, & Blatt, 2001).
To examine the links between school CP and the well-being of children, a location was selected where school CP continues to be commonly practiced: India. Indian schools have a long history of relying on CP to discipline students (Morrow & Singh, 2014; Sharma & Sharma, 2004). For example, one study found that the most common perpetrators of CP, according to 320 youth, were teachers (46%), followed by fathers (36%), and mothers (13%) (Deb & Modak, 2010). Although the use of CP to discipline children aged 6- to 14-years-old in secular schools was officially banned in India in 2009 with the passage of the Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education Act (Ministry of Human Resource Development, 2009), there is ample evidence to indicate that school CP continues to be widely used across India (Morrow & Singh, 2014; Ogando Portela & Pells, 2015).
Objectives of the study
The present study sought to provide empirical data about school CP and its relation to child well-being. Specifically, the first goal was to document the prevalence of school CP among students, using youth as informants. The second goal was to examine associations between school CP, student mental health, and certain demographic variables. Along the lines of what has been found with parental CP, we hypothesized that students who report experiencing school CP would also report more internalizing problems (i.e., anxiety and depression). In addition, we expected that youth who experienced more problems or tension at home would report more internalizing problems than other students. Problems with parent-child relationships or the home, in general, are well recognized to aggravate adolescents’ other problems and negatively affect their well-being (e.g., Huebner et al., 2014). We also assessed students’ reports of social support and resilience to test whether those variables would attenuate, by serving as moderators, the relations between school CP and internalizing problems.
Method
Participants
Complete data were available from 519 secondary school students (62.6% male), aged 13- to 16-years-old. Approximately half of the students attended either government or public schools (53.4%) and the remaining students attended private, but non-religious schools in or around the city of Puducherry, India. All students were bilingual; they could read as well as write both English and Hindi/Tamil. Participants formed three age groups: 11- to 12-years-old (15.0%), 13- to 14-years-old (61.5%), and 15- to 16-years-old (23.5%). Slightly less than half of the students (n = 222) were in the 8th grade (42.8%), 175 (33.7%) were in the 9th grade, and 122 (23.5%) were in the 10th grade. A majority (59.9%) of students had one sibling, 22.9% had two siblings, 7.3% had three or more, and 9.8% were only children.
Most (77.3%) of the adolescents lived in single-family homes, with the remainder living in extended-family homes (i.e., with grandparents, aunts, and uncles). Parental education ranged considerably: 19.7% of fathers and 21.0% of mothers had only completed primary school; 20.0% of fathers and 24.9% of mothers had completed secondary school; 14.8% of fathers and 18.3% of mothers had passed the secondary exam; 13.9% of fathers and 15.2% of mothers completed high school; 21.0% of fathers and 12.3% of mothers had a graduate degree, and only 10.6% of fathers and 8.3% of mothers had a post-graduate degree. Education level was highly correlated across mothers and fathers, r = 0.73, p < 0.001, so scores were averaged to obtain an overall measure of parental education. Higher scores indicated more years of education. In terms of occupation, fathers worked in the service industry (27.9%), business (32.2%), or part-time jobs (32.9%); only five men (1.0%) were unemployed. The majority of mothers (74.6%) were home-makers, with small percentages engaged in service work (10.0%), in business (5.4%), or in part-time work (8.5%). Just under half of the families (43.9%) had a monthly income of less than 10,000 Indian Rupees (INRs, approximately $150), 15.4% reported a family income of 10,001–20,000 INRs (up to $300), 71 (13.7%) earned an income of 21,001–30,000 INRs (up to $453), and 140 (27.0%) reported a higher income (>$453). Almost one-third (29.9%) of adolescents lived in a rural area, 44.9% lived in an urban area, and the rest (25.2%) lived in a semi-urban area.
Measures
Corporal punishment in school
Students reported the occurrence of school CP on the Structured Questionnaire for Children (SQC; Deb & Modak, 2007). This instrument was developed with the assistance of two experts in the field before being utilized in several prior studies (e.g., Deb, Bhattacharyya, & Thomas, 2016; Deb & Modak, 2010; Deb, Ray, Bhattacharyya, & Sun, 2016; Deb & Walsh, 2012). For school CP, students indicated whether they had been injured physically or seriously hurt in school by teachers or staff in the past year (0 = No, 1 = Yes). If they responded in the affirmative, they then reported how frequently the CP occurred (1 = rarely/once in six months; 2 = occasionally/once a month; or 3 = almost regularly/once or twice a week). These items were combined to obtain a single four-point measure of the frequency of CP in school, ranging from 0 = not in the past year to 3 = once or twice a week.
Psychological symptoms
Participants completed the 22-item Depression and Anxiety Youth Scale (DAYS; Newcomer, Barenbaum, & Bryant, 1994). Items were rated on a four-point Likert-type scale ranging from 1 = not at all to 4 = almost all the time. Items were summed with higher scores indicating more severe symptoms of depression and anxiety. In a number of previous studies this study tool was found to be suitable for measuring depression and anxiety (Heflinger, Bickman, Northrup, & Sonnichsen, 1997; Horn et al., 2004). Coefficient alpha in the current sample was 0.83.
Family tension
Participants were asked to rate their family environment as either congenial/friendly or disturbed/under tension. This dichotomous global rating of the family climate has been used in prior research (e.g., Deb, Bhattacharyya, & Thomas, 2016; Deb, Ray, et al., 2016).
Protective factors
Participants completed the seven-item Support Functions Scale (SFS: Sarason, Sarason, Shearin, & Pierce, 1987) to assess social support. Items were rated on a four-point Likert-type scale ranging from 1 = never to 4 = quite often. Examples included ‘Someone to talk about things that worry me’; ‘Someone to encourage me when I am feeling down’; and ‘Someone whom I can depend on’. Items were summed, with higher scores indicating greater social support. Coefficient alpha was 0.75 for this sample.
Students also completed the 25-item Resilience Scale (RS: Neill & Dias, 2001) to assess perceived sense of confidence and resiliency. Items were rated on a seven-point Likert-type scale ranging from 1 = Disagree to 7 = Agree. Items were summed with higher scores indicating greater resiliency. This instrument has been effectively used to measure resilience in previous studies (e.g., Wilks, 2008; Wilks & Croom, 2008). Coefficient alpha in the current sample was 0.91.
Procedure
The study, following the guidelines of the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) for research on human populations, was approved by Pondicherry University’s IRB. A two-stage cluster sampling method was followed for selecting the sample. First, 14 schools (three schools under the Central Board of Secondary Education and 11 schools under the local school board) were randomly selected from a list of higher secondary schools in and around Puducherry. School authorities were then approached. The authorities at nine of the 14 schools granted permission for data collection.
All of the students who were present at school on the day when data collection occurred were invited to participate. The study was briefly introduced to students and they were assured of confidentiality. Students’ informed consent was then obtained. During data collection, researchers were available to answer questions. A small number of students in the public (government) schools did not understand a few questions due to the language limitations. The researchers gave minimal help to fewer than ten students who had difficulty with understanding a couple of the words or questions in the surveys. The researchers simply clarified the meaning of those words/sentences in local language. The administration time was approximately 20 minutes. The study was carried out from July, 2014 to June, 2015.
Data analysis
Descriptive statistics were computed on the variables for preliminary analyses. Those analyses consisted of the variable means, correlations between variables, and chi-square tests to evaluate possible differences due to gender and type of school. School type was included as a dichotomous variable: whether the school was private or government supported. The hypotheses were evaluated with hierarchical regressions.
Results
Preliminary analyses
Almost two-thirds of the students (62.2%) revealed they had experienced school CP in the past year. Boys reported receiving more school CP than girls, 66.5% vs. 54.1%, χ2[1, N = 519] = 7.84, p < 0.05. Similarly, students attending public (government) schools reported more CP than students attending private schools (70.8% vs. 51.7%), χ2[1, N = 519] = 20.61, p < 0.001. Among those students who reported school CP, 89 (or 27.6% of those hit) students indicated that it happened to them rarely (once in 6 months), 145 (44.9%) students reported that it occurred occasionally (approximately once a month), and the remaining 89 students (27.6%) reported that they regularly (once or twice a week) experienced CP in the classroom. Approximately one-third of the adolescents characterized their families as being under tension or strain (37.0%).
Students’ average level of anxiety and depression was 38.23 (SD = 8.55); see Table 1 for other descriptive statistics. Boys reported more symptoms of depression and anxiety (M = 39.18, SD = 8.75) than did girls (M = 36.63, SD = 7.99) t(517) = 3.31, p < 0.001, d = 0.30. As predicted, school CP was positively correlated with anxiety and depression although the correlation was weak, r = 0.18, p < 0.001 (see Table 2 for the bivariate correlations). Similarly, the point biserial correlation between anxiety and depression and family tension was significant, but the association was weak, r = 0.14, p < 0.001.
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Table 1. Descriptive statistics for the student information and variables.
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Table 2. Bivariate correlations.
With regard to social support and resiliency, students reported moderate levels of social support and relatively high levels of resiliency, on average. These two scores were positively related, r = 0.27, p < 0.01. The two scores were also significantly correlated with parent education and type of school, but negatively related to family tension, with the magnitude of the relations being modest (see Table 2).
Tests of the hypotheses
Given the results of descriptive analyses, sex of the student and type of school were controlled for in subsequent analyses. Because attending a private school and parental education were strongly positively correlated, r = 0.71, p < 0.001, we controlled for school type because type of school was more conceptually relevant to the hypotheses. First, we tested the first two hypotheses: School CP would be positively associated with internalizing symptoms and negatively associated with social support and resiliency. We performed this using a hierarchical regression and regressing each of the dependent variables onto school CP after controlling for participant sex (0 = female, 1 = male), school type (0 = public, 1 = private), and family tension (0 = no, 1 = yes). All independent variables were grand-mean centered.
School CP remained positively associated with anxiety and depression, b = 1.05, SE = 0.33, t = 3.16, p < 0.01, explaining 2% of the unique variance with internalizing problems, F(1, 514) = 9.97, p < 0.1, and negatively associated with resilience, b = 2.26, SE = 1.09, t = 2.07, p < 0.05, explaining 1% of the unique variance, F(1, 514) = 4.28, p < 0.05. However, school CP was not associated with social support, b = 0.20, SE = 0.18, t = 1.12, p = 0.26, after controlling for the other independent variables, and explained less than 1% of the variance, R2 = .002, F(1, 514) = 1.26, p = 0.26.
We examined whether the presence of family tension exacerbated the associations of school CP by adding the Family Tension × School CP interaction term to each of the analyses. As shown in Table 3, the interaction was significant for anxiety and depression scores. The simple slopes for the associations of school CP on internalizing problems for adolescents reporting family tension, b = 1.91, SE = 0.62, t = 3.08, p = 0.002, R2 = 0.05, F(1,188) = 9.50, p = 0.002, and for adolescents reporting no family tension, b = 0.53, SE = 0.38, t = 1.40, p = 0.16, R2 = 0.006, F(1, 323) = 1.95, p = 0.16, are presented graphically in Figure 1. As hypothesized, family tension exacerbated the links between school CP and internalizing problems.
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Table 3. Effects of school CP and family environment on adolescent functioning.
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Table 4. Moderating effects of social support and resilience on the effects of family environment and school CP on internalizing problems.
Finally, we tested the hypothesis that resilience and social support would buffer the relations between school CP on internalizing problems. The anxiety and depression scores were regressed onto family tension, school CP, and the hypothesized protective factor (resilience and social support, in separate analyses), and all 2- and 3-way interactions. The Family Tension × Social Support interaction was significant, but neither social support nor resilience buffered the association of school CP on internalizing problems. Examination of the simple slopes indicated that among adolescents reporting family tension, social support was positively associated with anxiety and depression, b = 0.51, SE = 0.16, t = 3.17, p = 0.002, R2 = 0.05, F(1, 187) = 10.23, p = 0.002. However, among those students not reporting family tension, social support was weakly associated with internalizing problems, b = 0.17, SE = 0.09, t = 1.79, p = 0.08, R2 = 0.01, F(1, 322) = 3.93, p = 0.05.
Discussion
This study provides novel data about a very old problem—teachers’ use of CP on students. Although there is ample evidence that teachers have been hitting children for hundreds of years (e.g., Hyman & Wise, 1979; Middleton, 2008), there have been almost no investigations into whether classroom CP is linked to child mental health problems. This absence of attention to the impact of school CP stands in stark contrast to research into parental use of CP, where there is now a large body of literature finding negative associations between parental CP and children;’s well-being (e.g., Gershoff & Grogan-Kaylor, 2016). In this study, we collected data from students—the single best informants to use for this type of study.
Relations between school CP and internalizing problems
To provide some initial data about whether school CP is associated with child functioning, data were collected from students from one community in eastern India where school CP remains common. Students reported about their experiences with physical punishment at school and their internalizing problems. In addition, they provided information about their home climate, and two potential moderators, social support and resilience. It was found that the majority (62%) of the students reported that they had experienced CP in school within the past 12 months. That percentage is very close to a recent report finding that 65% of children experienced CP at school, using a much larger sample (12,000 children) but conducted in the same state (Morrow & Singh, 2014). The rate was found to be even higher in other parts of India, the states of Andhra Pradesh and Telangana, where 80% of 8-year-old children reported receiving CP (Ogando Portela & Pells, 2015). However, in two other Indian locations (Kolkata & the State of Tripura), the rates of reported teacher CP were reported to be considerably lower (25.1% & 21.9%, respectively; Bhattacharyya, 2012; Deb & Modak, 2010). Thus, caution should be taken when attempting to generalize about prevalence rates in a large and diverse country such as India.
In additional analyses, we identified one student and one school characteristic associated with higher reports of CP. Two-thirds of the male adolescents reported they were targets of CP in the past year, in contrast to just over half of girls. This sex difference in reports of experiencing CP is in line with other studies that find older males are more likely to be hit than girls by their parents (e.g., Gershoff et al., 2015; Straus & Stewart, 1999) as well as be the targets of school CP (e.g., Human Rights Watch, 2008).
In line with that finding, we found a second sex difference: Male students were more likely to report internalizing problems. That finding stands in contrast to the common result that females are more likely to report internalizing problems than males in most samples from the industrialized, Western countries (e.g., Essau, Lewinsohn, Seeley, & Sasagawa, 2010). However, at least one study has found that teachers reported more internalizing problems in males than females (Newcomer, Barenbaum, & Pearson, 1995). This particular finding merits more attention and, if replicated, it should be investigated in greater depth.
An even greater difference was found in the type of school the students’ attended. Almost three-quarters of students in public schools indicated they had been hit in the past year in school, in contrast to about half of the students in private schools. Awareness of the discrepancies in experiences between public and private schools is well recognized in South Asia (e.g., Alderman, Orazem, & Paterno, 2001). It is ironic that school CP is more common in public schools in a country where school CP has been outlawed. One explanation for this is employment security. Teachers in private schools are more apt to obey school authorities because they can be fired. On the other hand, teachers in public schools have employment security and are more apt to disregard school authorities and select their own punishment methods, which are likely to reflect the prevailing cultural practice of using CP.
The key question that guided this study was whether reports of CP received in school was associated with students’ reports of their internalizing problems. In the simplest statistical analysis, there was indeed a positive correlation between the two variables (r = 0.18, p < 0.001). The regression analyses also indicated a significant relation between school CP and internalizing problems, although the magnitude was not large. The functional significance of the relation likely varies across youth, with some students showing little or no association while in others there may be a much greater impact. More investigations are needed to better understand the variability.
School CP is likely associated with other indications of child problems as well. Students who were hit by teachers may also exhibit externalizing and other types of mental health problems, although we did not assess those. Future studies should collect information about the relation between school CP and student functioning on a wide range of variables. To our knowledge this is among the first studies to link school CP with mental health problems. The only previously published study we located examined patently abusive teacher behavior (burning, breaking bones) and its positive association with student aggression (Jaghoory, Björkqvist, & Österman, 2013).
Because prior published work linking school CP with child well-being is not available, we could not compare these results with prior findings. However, these findings about internalizing problems in general, and increased anxiety and depressive symptoms in specific, do correspond with research findings concerning CP delivered by parents. To point to just two examples, Aucoin, Frick, and Bodin (2006) found that 12-year-old youths who were hit by their parents reported more depressive symptoms than youths who were not hit. Similarly, adolescents who reported a history of parental CP, had higher rates of anxiety than other youth (Fergusson & Lynskey, 1997).
We also found that the association between school CP and internalizing symptoms was higher for students who reported family tension. We do not have enough information to be able to explain this finding. One explanation is an additive one: Students who have difficulties at home may be depressed or anxious already. When they are hit at school, that experience then exacerbates their internalizing symptoms. An alternative explanation is a depressed child is more likely to have difficult relationships with both parents and teachers. Because our data are cross-sectional, we cannot evaluate those explanations. Only a longitudinal study can determine the temporal relations among the variables.
We were not able to support our hypothesis that social support or a youth’s resilience would serve to buffer the association of school CP and internalizing problems. It could be that our measures were not sensitive enough to detect buffering. Alternatively, the experience of being a recipient of CP in school may not be easily protected against by either social supports or resilience characteristics. We did find that youth with internalizing problems and from families characterized with tension report more social support. The explanation may be that these children seek out, or are provided with, social support due to their apparent needs.
Limitations
Several limitations of the study need to be recognized. The chief limitation is that the data are derived from only one source: Students attending schools in one city. The city, Puducherry (also called Pondicherry), is in one of the seven Indian union territories, and has a population of 675,000. There is no corroborating evidence as to whether the students actually experienced the CP and the accuracy of their reports of their internal states. A related limitation concerns the way that CP was reported. We first asked students whether they had been hurt or experienced an injury at school, and then, if yes, how frequently they experienced CP in school. This is a limitation because our approach focused on students who received more serious forms of CP rather than any form of CP. We also do not know if students’ reports were veridical. However, it is likely that students under-reported, rather than over-reported CP (as well as the quality of their home environment) due to feelings of embarrassment, shame, or guilt or their emotional attachment to their teachers (Deb, 2006).
It is also important to recognize that no causal statements can be made about CP as precipitating the students’ mental health status, given the data were collected at only one point in time using a correlational design. Nevertheless, in studies when initial levels of child behavior problems are controlled for, parental CP has been found to contribute more to behavioral problems over time (see Gershoff & Grogan-Kaylor, 2016). Certainly, it is possible the internalizing problems were present prior to the school CP. However, it is unlikely that anxiety or depressive symptoms prompted the teacher to use CP. According to student reports, the CP was elicited in response to infractions such as whispering to a friend in class, failing to bring in homework, or acting disrespectfully to the teacher. That said, it should be recognized that self-reported data collected at one time point represent a significant methodological limitation that needs to be rectified in subsequent, multi-informant longitudinal research.
Another limitation is that student reports of the home environment were restricted to a single, dichotomous, and global variable, basically characterizing the family as either tense or not. Future research should use more nuanced assessment, such as the Family Environment Scale (Moos & Moos, 1994), assuming that instrument has been shown to be culturally valid in India. A more detailed assessment of the types, frequency, and severity of school corporal punishment would also strengthen the study. Another drawback of the present study is that our sample was obtained in one geographic area of India. A more diverse sample, from different parts of the country, with multiple ethnic groups, as well as income levels, is needed to test and then extend the generalizability of the findings. A final type of limitation is that we did not assess and analyze youth reports about experiencing CP from others (such as parents), nor were other potential stressors or possible traumas assessed that could also contribute to the students’ psychological state.
Despite the limitations, this research provides novel data about a serious worldwide problem—students receiving physical punishment in schools. There are now hundreds of studies finding parental CP is associated with a variety of long-term problems. This study adds to that body of literature by finding that school CP, as experienced by Indian youth, is also linked to mental health problems. Beyond the negative psychological correlates, the use of CP on children is a violation of their dignity and their rights, as outlined in the 1989 Convention on the Rights of the Child (e.g., Newell, 2011). India has already passed legislation against CP in schools (i.e., The Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education Act in 2009). Section 17 of that act states: ‘No child shall be subjected to physical punishment or mental harassment’. However, as these data and other reports in India indicate, CP continues to be widely used in some schools.
Summary and recommendations
More than half (62%) of the school children sampled in Puducherry, India, reported experiencing school CP in the past 12 months. Students who experienced CP in school also reported experiencing more depression, anxiety, as well as lower levels of resiliency than other youth. At the same time, family tension exacerbated the effects of school CP on internalizing problems. Neither social support nor resilience was found to buffer the association of school CP and internalizing problems.
Based on the data reported here, three recommendations can be made. First, the results need to be replicated and extended in India and other countries. Legislative bodies around the globe likely want to see evidence about the links between school CP and mental health problems in their own country before passing legislation. Second, despite partial or full legislative bans on school CP both in India and in more than 125 countries (Global Initiative to End all Corporal Punishment of Children, 2015), the punishment continues to be widely used. The bans need enforcement by imposing significant consequences on teachers or school administrators who disregard the law and continue to use harsh disciplinary techniques. Third, there is a pressing need for school administrators and teachers around the globe to adopt more positive educational approaches. For example, there is now evidence that techniques such as ‘school-wide positive behavioral interventions’ (e.g., Bradshaw, Mitchell, & Leaf, 2010) or ‘restorative justice’ (e.g., Wearmouth, Mckinney, & Glynn, 2007), or ‘collaborative problem solving’ (Greene, 2011) can be highly effective in promoting good behavior in youth, increasing achievement, and giving school personnel a greater sense of efficacy. These recommendations will likely help children succeed in school without the burden of school-induced mental health problems, such as the internalizing problems we report here.
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
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Author biographies
Sibnath Deb, PhD & DSc, Professor of Applied Psychology, Pondicherry University (A Central University), India and Adjunct Professor, SPHSW, Queensland University of Technology (QUT), Australia has 27 years of teaching and research experience. Currently, he is also acting as Director (I/C), Directorate of Distance Education and Dean (I/C), School of Law, Pondicherry University. His latest edited book, Child Safety, Welfare and Well-being was published by Springer in 2016. His research interests include students’ mental health, child abuse and neglect, and adolescent reproductive health.
Aneesh Kumar, PhD, Assistant Professor, Department of Psychology, Christ University, Bengaluru, India has worked as Project Officer in a research project funded by the Indian Council for Social Sciences Research (ICSSR) in Pondicherry University and as Head, Department of Psychology, Wadi Huda Institute of Research and Advanced Studies affiliated to Kannur University, Kerala. He did his doctoral research on the topic ‘Burden of child abuse and neglect in Kerala: Risk factors and impact’. He is interested in evaluation research in public health and counselling programs.
George W. Holden, PhD, is Professor and Chair of the Psychology Department at Southern Methodist University. Holden’s research interests are in the area of social development, with a focus on parent-child relationships. His work, into the determinants of parental social cognition and behavior, discipline and positive parenting, has been supported by different funding agencies. He is the author of numerous articles as well as author or editor of five books. For more information, go to: http://www.smu.edu/Dedman/Academics/Departments/Psychology/People/HoldenG.
Lorelei Simpson Rowe, PhD, is Associate Professor in the Psychology Department of Southern Methodist University. Dr Rowe’s research interests are in the area of couple relationships, couple therapy, and interpersonal violence. Her work has been supported by grants from the Hogg Foundation for Mental Health and the Timberlawn Research Foundation. She is the author of a number of scientific articles published in various international journals. For more information, go to: http://www.smu.edu/Dedman/Academics/Departments/Psychology/People/SimpsonRoweL.