In this homepage you will find information that you need to know about mobbing/bullying in the workplace and how badly it can affect anyone.

You will find a description of the mobbing concept. What is meant by the term mobbing (or as certain scholars prefer to call it: bullying)? If you would like to know more about it, just click the hyperword mobbing concept and you will find a description. After reading the file´s text, you can click back to where you started from, in other words, to this file. Another file presents the official definition of mobbing. Illustrative case stories have been selected to make it easier for you to understand the subject with both your brain and your heart.

Since the beginning of the 80s, when I chose the term "mobbing", a great many studies on mobbing have taken place around the world in order to find out more about this phenomenon. Most of these studies were carried out in the Scandinavian countries. The most important study can be found in this homepage´s literature list. These studies provided good statistical information with regard to the frequency with which mobbing occurs at workplaces in certain countries.

Important findings concerning measures will be presented. I will give examples of basic measures that must be implemented in order to reform psychosocial work environments, in other words, to prevent or to stop mobbing attacks and to rehabilitate the victim.

Unfortunately, but understandably, the problem leads to illness from mobbing. I will describe the onset of this illness as precisely as possible in order to be able to clearly account for how "victim" status is reached. I will also provide a description based on my experiences with patients and why and when their coping behavior begins to further harm them.

Together with colleagues, I developed an in-patient treatment program. We had very good results in the rehabilitation of mobbing victims in a specialized clinic which, unfortunately, today no longer exists, as the Swedish health care system became quite irritated by our social-anamnestical technique. This technique provided rich information concerning each case, and shed light on illegal and quite often criminal activities to which victims had been subjected, mainly by the employer, the labor union and the health care system. It is of great importance that we describe the boycott of the clinic by the Swedish health care system, as these tendencies have also arisen in other countries. In fact, I arranged this homepage mainly to be able to give a comprehensive description of the treatment method for other professionals to use and for victims to request. I will gladly offer any victim educational advice regarding what is called in the USA "self science": a way for the victim to study him- or herself. I will provide supervision by means of this homepage in order to help you accomplish this goal. I also wish to offer to the victim a kind of "buyer´s competence" as it is very confusing to enter the market of psychologists, psychiatrists and other professionals. However, my intention is also to provide these professional groups with information via this homepage. My particular idea is to provide both groups with the same information, as I believe in the democracy of knowledge that can be achieved by making knowledge transparent. More health care should be administered in that way.

If you are a victim, this homepage will help you back to a normal life. I know this because of my experiences from working with about 1.300 patients, former mobbing victims, who worked themselves out of a total social stop in their lives. It can be done. Quite often the price of your success is to rearrange and reshape a familiar and comfortable life situation into something quite different. Completely destroyed careers very often cannot be repaired to once again resemble that which once existed. My ambition is to show you social techniques that will help you survive as a human being with social competence.

This section deals, in other words, with the subject "back to work.". One purpose of this homepage is to help you stabilize again, both socially and psychologically. You will find a selection of different measures for accomplishing this, even if you are still in a state of shock or deep depression. I know that people want to come through this devastating period, but quite often don't know how to do it and therefore wind up in a state of hopelessness that may reach dangerous - even suicidal - levels. I will also discuss survival techniques that can be used when your environment threatens to sabotage your efforts to come back to a richer social life.

Some files in this homepage describe, statistically, what it means to be a mobbing victim. You will also find case histories here. It is quite probable that you will find descriptions that remind you of your own case. Even descriptions of the mobbers will be given. In a longer section I will give my view of personality theories as they are used in this area, although these theories are hardly adequate descriptions with regard to mobbing in particular and the victim´s experiences in general. However, there are other theories within social psychology that may provide you with a certain understanding: The attribution psychological theory describes why society very often wants to blame the victim. Another theory about stigmatizing describes the stereotypic development that marks the victim.

Much is known about the power structures at the workplace that allow mobbing structures and mobbing situations to develop. This subject will be followed up by educational programs: In collaboration with several organizations, I have received permission to present their internal anti-mobbing programs. I will also present the anti-mobbing laws that have been legislated in, for example, Sweden.

Following this, organizational education and its goals will be discussed. This section of my homepage targets personnel departments in organizations rather than victims of mobbing, as they are not in a position to bring about these developments within organizations. A victim should never have to wait, suffering agony, for an organization to reform its psychosocial work environment one fine day. This development takes years. One area in this homepage is, therefore, directed towards how to work with statistical inquiries in order to measure the quality of the psychosocial work environment, and how to reform it.

I know, and research is showing this, that many victims suffer after having received incorrect diagnoses, which is one of the real problems that further victimizes the individual. Diagnoses and situational analyses ("social anamnesis") can be important steps in a rehabilitation program and will therefore be presented in a special section. You will also find instructions in the files concerning services and sales. Unfortunately, in order to keep this homepage on the Internet, I have to generate some sales in order to raise funds for the homepage. I wish you a successful rehabilitation. You are welcome to take part in my Internet conference, when it starts during the autumn of 1997.

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