Abstract

The study examined bullying at the workplace: psychological abuse and its implications for counselling. Two objectives and hypotheses guided the study. The descriptive survey method was employed for the study. The population for the study comprised all academic and non-academic staff of Ambrose Alli University, Ekpoma, Edo State, Nigeria. The sample for the study consisted of 500 academic and non-academic staff members of the institution. A multi-stage sampling technique was adopted to randomly select 200 males and 300 females among fourteen (14) faculties in the institution for the study. The result shows that the t-calculated value of 2.651 and a corresponding critical value is 1.96 at 0.05 levels of significance and 498 degrees of freedom, the null hypothesis was rejected. This implies that there is a significant difference in the bullying of male and female at the workplace of academic and non-academic staff at Ambrose Alli University Ekpoma. Also, the t-calculated value of 1.610 with a corresponding critical value of 1.96 at 0.05 levels of significance and 498 degrees of freedom implies that there is a significant difference in the psychological abuse from bullying of male and female at the workplace of academic and non-academic staff at Ambrose Alli University Ekpoma. The study concludes that there is an effect of gender within the age bracket of 45–55 years on differences in staff bullying, while there is no gender influence in the way both sexes are psychologically abused in the institution. The implication of counselling is that counsellors should always take variables like distress, anxiety, panic attacks, depression, loss of self-esteem and self-confidence, or sleep disturbance into consideration when developing therapeutic interventions for victims of bullying. It was therefore recommended, among others, that workplace bullying should be discouraged by management policies, prerogatives, and bureaucratic processes, which in turn affect individuals who have already been bullied, whether to speak out or keep silent about bullying situations.