I reported earlier that a Norwegian study revealed that abused targets are twice as likely to have suicidal thoughts than those who were never abused. Pioneer Heinz Leymann estimated that 10 percent of those bullied take their lives.

Researchers defined bullying as harassment, badgering, and freezing out that generally:

• Occurred repeatedly over a period of time.
• Involved two parties in which one had a higher ranking than the other.

It happens so often that there’s now a term for it. “Bullycide” happens when the cause of suicide is attributable to the victim having been bullied.

Now researchers in Australia report similar findings. Australian researchers determined that workplace bullying or harassment was associated with 1.54 greater odds of suicide ideation.

How workplace abuse can lead any of us to suicide (“bullycide”)

Findings show that none of us have a thick enough skin to be exempt from the workplace...

By Amy Collett

Are you thinking about starting a business out of your home? If so, you probably know about the many advantages of using your home as a business headquarters, such as lower overhead costs, no commute, and flexibility in schedule.

But to reap the benefits, you must prepare and strategize your home-based business the right way. Otherwise, you will find it hard to succeed in the short term, much less the long term. Below are some practical, budget-friendly tips to help you start a home-based business on solid ground.

Consider Business Financing

First of all, it’s hard to start a business when you don’t have a lot of cash flow. To help reduce stress and give yourself solid footing as you launch your business, look into your options with small business funding. That way, you can get assistance to get any new equipment, inventory, additional staff, and other things that will help you get a good start.

Research government funding options, such as traditional SBA...

Regardless of which side of the gun control debate we're on, we can agree on one thing: at the root of mass shootings is either mental illness, abuse, or both.

"[Attorney Jim] Lewis said Cruz was a loner and 'a little quirky,' and the family hosting him knew there had been some disciplinary problems and fights, but Cruz had never expressed any discontent toward his former teachers or classmates. 'He was a smaller kid and (there's) some indication there might have been some bullying going on....' the lawyer said."
— Eliott C. McLaughlin and Madison Park, CNN

No matter the experience, education, skill, personality, or contribution to an organization, every human should have basic rights. Every worker should have a right to feel:

1. A sense of belonging. Workers should have a right to feel like we are included in an organization and part of a team.
2. Valued. Workers should have a right to feel like our contributions have worth and importance.
3. Respected. Workers should have a right to dignity and have our human needs and individual strengths and weaknesses honored.
4. Healthy. Workers should have a right to feel strong. We should have a right to work in environments that promote well-being.
5. Accomplished. Workers should have a right to information and resources necessary to do our jobs well so we can feel productive.
6. Supported. Workers should have a right to feel heard and receive appropriate responses when we voice concerns.
7. Fairly treated. Workers should have a right to reasonable...

If you've been abused before, you may be waiting for the other shoe to drop when dealing with a new boss. But difficult does not mean abusive. Understanding your personality type and others' personality types may help you better appreciate others' strengths and understand how to work with their weaknesses.

Here's a quick guide to the four personality types to help you better get along with difficult people. (Most people have a primary type and a secondary type, and opposite corners have the most difficulty in getting along because they operate the most differently.)

GET IT DONE
Task-oriented and aggressive
Get It Dones are results-focused. They have aggressive, competitive natures and are independent.

Strengths:

• Objective-focused
• Know what they want and how to get there
• Communicates quickly
• Gets to the point
• Hardworking
• Does not shy away from conflict

Weaknesses:

• Sometimes tactless and brusque
• Can get impatient
• Can be an "ends justify the means" type of person

How to...

The Civil Rights Act of 1964 made discrimination on race, color, religion, sex, or national origin and sexual harassment illegal.

But 50 years later, workplaces are still unhealthy.

Fifty years later, employees still suffer from abuse of power at work. Fifty years later, employees still endure stress disorders and depression from verbal abuse, threatening, humiliating, or intimidating conduct, and sabotage. Fifty years later, our nation's most productive and moral employees fear an abusive boss might kick them down again, like a bulldog sitting in the corner ready to bite without warning.

Fifty years later, businesses suffer from decreased productivity, lower morale, and increased absenteeism when business owners tolerate a bully's destructive behavior. Fifty years later, businesses lose hundreds of thousands in expenses from high turnover when they allow abusers to make targets' lives miserable. Fifty years later, businesses suffer from higher health care...

Afraid you won't be able to detect an abuser on your next job interview? In his book Bully in Sight: How to Predict, Resist, Challenge, and Combat Workplace Bullying: Overcoming the Silence and Denial by which Abuse Thrives, Tim Field outlines these bully characteristics:

• Cavalier attitude
• Delegation and dumping
• Differing values
• Divided loyalty
• Duplicity
• Envy
• Evasiveness
• Failure mentality
• Fait accompli
• Favoritism
• Focus on the victim
• Frequent moves
• Humorlessness
• Inability to cope with failure
• Inability to plan ahead
• Inconsistency
• Indecision
• Ingratitude
• Insatiability
• Insensitivity
• Insincerity
• Interference
• Imposition
• Jekyll and Hyde persona
• Know-it-all attitude
• Lack of competence
• Lack of contingency planning
• Lack of foresight
• Misrepresentation
• Mood swings
• Need to assert authority
• Negative language
• Opportunism
• Plagiarism
• Poor judgment
• Poor listening skills
• Resoluteness
• Rigidity
• Self-importance
• Selfishness
• Shifting goalposts
• Short-term thinking
• Short-term memory
• Spinelessness
• Steadfast...

UK psychologist Aryanne Oade works with both workplace abusers and targets of workplace abuse and says in her "Recovery From Workplace Bullying" article that workplace abuse involves:

• The abuser taking away power from the target by limiting her behavioral choices and disregarding her boundaries.
• The abuser giving that power to herself.

This power dynamic sets the tone for their relationship and involves compliance on the part of the target, who is left feeling less than human and powerless. Eventually, the once high performing target's wellbeing, performance, and reputation greatly suffer.

The target's biggest challenge: to save her self-confidence
Targets struggle to remain objective about themselves both during and after bullying.

Some lose sight of who they are, what qualities they possess, what skills they have developed, and what they are good at doing. [They begin to believe that] they are useless or ineffective or won’t be happy again or...

Have you ever felt like management treats co-workers better than you even though those co-workers do less work? Do those co-workers seem more entitled to higher pay or other recognition even though you're more cooperative, hard-working, or productive?

We see the ego-driven person get rewarded above the hard worker throughout history. Martin Luther King Jr. got more recognition for progress in the civil rights movement. Yet Rosa Parks put in hard work over years and was reduced to a tired worker who refused to give up her seat one day.

Entitlement refers to a belief that one is deserving of some particular reward or benefit. In Bully Free at Work's "What does entitlement have to do with workplace bullying?," the writer says that if you feel resentment at work, your bosses may be treating you unfairly.

You may experience entitlement if:

• You do more of the work for less compensation. You may be the go-to person because you get things done, but you feel like a dumping...

Abuse of any kind involves boundary crossing. Abusers can selfishly take without asking, including your kindness, patience, and need for respect.

But targets aren't helpless. In her Psychology Today article "If you set a boundary, expect to deal with anger," Susan Biali M.D. says that "in most cases when our boundaries are crossed, we’ve allowed it. As a child, we may have learned to allow it because we were helpless and depended on the big boundary-crossers for survival. But as an adult, unless a situation is extreme, we usually participate in the violation of our own boundaries by failing to properly defend them."

So what do we do when we were raised as children to accept boundary crossing, maybe from a parent or sibling? How to we begin to defend our boundaries? Says Biali:

I remember a few years ago, when someone wanted me to make a major change in my plans in order to accommodate their plans. My plans had been in place for months, they had just...