In the past year, the disastrous effects of bullying have become more visible with high profile youth suicides. More adults are recognizing that bullying victims can suffer from depression, low self-esteem, health problems, poor grades, and have suicidal thoughts.

That’s why Montefiore Medical Center’s community forum two weeks ago focused on the issue.

“For too long, we’ve turned a blind eye,” said Robert Spencer of the Bronx district attorney’s office at the forum in Montefiore’s Cherkasky Auditorium. Bullying has long been perceived as “just something kids do, said Dr. Erica Lander, director of Montefiore’s school health clinic at PS 8 in Bedford Park.

And it’s not enough to tell kids to just walk away. Experts stressed the need to equip youth with tools to respond. Spencer explains that hanging out without a large group of friends can help.

“It’s the imbalance of power that makes it bullying,” Spencer added. “In situations where there is equal power, each party has the ability to find a solution. The imbalance of power of bullying prevents both parties from resolving the conflict on their own.”

Bullying can affect the entire school. “[It] changes the community and students will feel insecure, which often means they are not learning properly,” Lander says.

Cheryl Heart, a school social worker from PS/MS 95 in Kingsbridge Heights, believes the whole community needs to get involved. “We live in a culture of violence and retaliatory violence,” she said. “We need to show our kids that it is possible to be nonviolent.”

“But the kids are part of the solution, rather than part of the problem,” Lander said.

Kids take cues from their parents, experts say. “Families are a socializing agent to social development of children,” Spencer says. “If parents use physical violence to punish their kids, kids will think that is the way you solve a problem.”

The forum touched upon multiple forms of bullying; physical violence, verbal violence, extortion, rumors, etc.  But Spencer said that cyber bullying is by far the most prevalent type of bullying today.

“Kids will often set up fights in class via Twitter,” Spencer said. “We all know that violence in against the law, but kids don’t realize that aggravated harassment is a misdemeanor which can mean one year in jail.”

Officer Jessica Feliciano of the NYPD Crime Prevention unit urged parents to keep the computer in a public area of the home so they can casually monitor its use.

In the classroom, Lander suggests that teachers create a code of conduct, which involves creating a list of set values the class agrees upon. This code, she says, can teach kids things such as empathy, respect, and personal responsibility.

This can also be done in the home. Above all, speakers stressed consistency and reinforcement on a daily basis.

“We would never teach them geometry for one day and expect them to know it,” Lander said.