Violence – Mobbing – How to Recognize and Deal with It

Dragan Milivojević Special hospital for substance abuse "Naltrex Zone", Belgrade, Serbia.
Abstract The term mobbing is of Anglo-Saxon origin and stands for psychological abuse in the workplace, in fact hostile and unethical communication within the working environment, against an individual or a group, which occurs at least once a week for at least six months. Activities of the abusers can be divided into fi ve categories - attacks on the possibility of adequate communication, activities that compromise the ability to maintain social contacts, activities that destroy the reputation of the victim, those discrediting the quality of the performed work and activities that are forcing the person to perform tasks that directly damage his/her health. In relation to the social aspect, typical targets of mobbing are young, ambitious and recently employed workers, older workers close to retirement, persons with disabilities, persons who point to the shortcomings in the work, those seeking more autonomy or a salary increase and eccentrics. The social aspect of abusers is not striking as a specifi c personality profile. In our social environment, the most common are labelling and activities that discredit the quality of work, and most common victims are women, highly educated persons and persons employed in private companies. The most frequent consequences of mobbing are psychosomatic disorders, stress-related mental disorders, depression, substance abuse disorders and suicide. Activities against mobbing can have two main discourses, prevention and elimination of the consequences. The mechanisms of action are to provide legal and psychological (medical) help. Legislation is determined by the attempt of mediation in the workplace and the implementation of laws on mobbing, while psychological support is implemented through targeted training in communication skills and psychotherapeutic rehabilitation of the already created consequences. Mobbing is a decades-long psycho-social and labour problem in our community, but only in the fi rst decade of this century it was demystifi ed and subjected to critical and research observation.
	MOBBING / HARASSMENT / COMUNICATION	Full Article Download (199kB)

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