This has been going on all Josh's school life. It began in prep when he was taunted for being different. Quiet and shy, he was an easy mark.

As he grew older, the bullying became more physical, more constant, more devastating.

Then Josh came out as gay last year, and the invective really flowed. They waited for him after school, threw rocks and sticks and balls at him. They wrapped lap-top straps around his throat, threatening to strangle him. They said they wished he was dead, and told him to go home and "slash your wrists for us". Once or twice he tried to.

A recent stabbing at Blackburn High School and a boy wielding a knife at Kalgoorlie Primary School - coinciding with yet another murderous rampage by an armed American teenager - has drawn the inevitable fears that our schools are becoming more violent places to be.

But educators and statistics say that bullying remains a far greater threat for Australian children than violence; as many as one in six children report being bullied at school weekly. It is, at the moment, probably the single biggest social issue facing children at school, cutting across class, gender and school type.

Girls and boys still tend to bully in gender-specific ways - girls will practise exclusion, or relational bullying; boys will call each other names and are more likely to be physically rough. But the gap between the two is narrowing. Ken Rigby, a psychologist and author of Stop the Bullying, said boys were more likely to use social manipulation as a means of bullying than many people believe.

And girls are becoming more physical. There has been an increase in female delinquency rates and female violence rates, even though they remain well below comparative rates for boys, said Chris Lennings, senior lecturer in psychology at Sydney University.

"We're seeing the great divide narrowing a little bit. We're seeing more and more girls engaging in more and more "boyish" behaviour, (such as) punching people out."

Bullying, of course, is not new. But psychologists and educationists are now much more aware of its impact on developing psyches. It can have repercussions well into adulthood. It is no longer a natural, inevitable part of adolescence, nor it is a "character-building" rite of passage; it is a damaging, traumatic experience for many young people that has clear links with depression and suicide.

As with all areas of human psychology, bullying is a complex issue. Dr Rigby said that models of parenting and home environments were a major influence on a child's behaviour.

"Certainly there's a correlation between (bullying) and being in a home which is fairly dysfunctional, and where there's a use of power-asserting tactics by family members, where parents tend to treat the children in a highly controlling and cold manner," he said.

The reaction of the victim also varied depending on the child. Some would shrug it off and wait for the bully to give it away; some would try to retaliate; others would try to hide their hurt by bluffing coolness, while the words burnt strongly in their memories and gnawed away at their self-esteem and happiness.

By the time a child was between five and seven, their patterns of behaviour had been set, Dr Lennings said. While some bullies grew out of it, others simply became better at it, learning to target vulnerable children in a way that would wound them most.

The hardest time for victims of bullying was about year 9, when teenagers' relationships with their parents and each other were changing, as they tentatively began to assert their independence. And there was certainly a link between bullying, depression and suicide, Dr Rigby said.

The solution, like the problem, is complex. Dr Lennings said that parents, more than schools, must take responsibility for curbing bullying and creating a culture - at home and school - where such behaviour was neither fruitful nor acceptable.

"I think parents have the greater responsibility. I think the school has the responsibility to identify bullying, to curb it, to involve parents in the management of it, but the parents are the ones who ultimately will make a difference."

It was often a difficult situation for parents of a bullied child. The impulse to rush in and defend them, to fight on their behalf, was not always the most beneficial, Dr Rigby said. In a recent study, he found that 10per cent of the bullied children he interviewed said that parental intervention had only made matters worse. But he said parents must act.

"Never ignore it, and never say to the child `come on, stick up for yourself,' because often the child will only tell the parent when it really is a very difficult situation."

He advises parents to listen carefully to what the child is saying and talk with him or her about ways to counter the problem. Sometimes it is necessary to take the matter to the school, even if the child protests for fear of retribution.

The problem for schools was that they were hamstrung for resources and time, said Michael Butler, president of the Welfare Teachers Association of Victoria. Important issues like bullying sometimes slid down priority lists.

He said an increase in teacher numbers, which would enable them to develop closer relationships with students, remained the key to curbing bullying.

Josh said that the bullying he had endured had changed him "to a huge extent". It had exacerbated his depression, left him lonely and isolated at school, and spurred his suicidal thoughts. More than anything, it had ruptured his self-esteem to such an extent that there were mornings when he simply could not lift his head off the pillow, and sometimes he didn't.

"I get depressed every night about going to school," he said. "I wake up in the morning and I have to force myself to get out of bed ... because of the sheer dread of going to school."

The day after a teenage boy was killed in a road accident last year, Josh's classmates were waiting for him. "Oh, we thought you were the person who was dead," they said to him. "What a pity."

Josh's name has been changed.

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