International Journal of Developmental Science 8 (2014) 37–41 DOI 10.3233/DEV-1400141 IOS Press Invited Commentary Bullying, Romantic Rejection, and Conflicts with Teachers: A Finnish Perspective Commentary on: Bullying, Romantic Rejection, and Conflicts with Teachers: The Crucial Role of Social Dynamics in the Development of School Shootings – A Systematic Review Atte Oksanen a,* , Riittakerttu Kaltiala-Heino b,c , Tomi Kiilakoski c and Nina Lindberg d a School of Social Sciences and Humanities, University of Tampere, Finland b School of Medicine, Tampere University Hospital, University of Tampere, Tampere, Finland c Finnish Youth Research Society, Helsinki & Oulu, Finland d Department of Psychiatry, University of Helsinki, Helsinki, Finland The systematic review by Sommer, Leuschner, and Scheithauer (2014) includes 126 school shooting cases from 13 countries. This comprehensive review provides a valuable synthesis of a topic largely discussed in school shooting research: The role of bullying and peer rejection on the road from being a member of the school community to becoming a homicidal perpetrator in that same community. Our aim is to bring forth new insight from Finnish research on school shootings and associ- ated phenomena. We provide an additional perspective and suggestion for further developments in the field. Finnish school shootings and research on the associa- tions on involvement in bullying and mental disorders are used here as examples. Three Finnish cases took place at Raumanmeri (1989; 14-yo male targeted three class mates, killing * Address for correspondence Atte Oksanen, School of Social Sciences and Humanities, 33014 Uni- versity of Tampere, Tampere, Finland. E-mail: atte.oksanen@uta.fi two of them), Jokela (2007; 18-yo male killed eight peo- ple at his school and committed suicide), and Kauhajoki (2008; 22-yo male student killed 10 and committed sui- cide). After the Jokela and Kauhajoki shootings we have not seen other major attacks on schools, but there have been severe school stabbings, involving students attack- ing one or many students (e.g. 2012 in Imatra, 2013 in Oulu) and also committing suicide after the attack (2012 in Alah¨ arm¨ a). Threats of repeating the events of Jokela and Kauhajoki also employed police exces- sively after those shootings, and adolescent psychiatric services were faced with numerous requests for eval- uating young people who had made school massacre threats (Lindberg, Sailas, & Kaltiala-Heino, 2012). We set our commentary on three different perspec- tives. First of all we point out that despite the fact that the school context is of utmost importance for understand- ing processes resulting in school shootings, research also needs to take into account family context and larger community. Secondly, we underline the impor- tance of school culture and both inter-generational and ISSN 2192-001X/14/$27.50 © 2014 – IOS Press and the authors. All rights reserved 37