Stalking can include many unsettling behaviors like telephone harassment, sending unwanted gifts, pursuing or surveillance. Stalkers have various reasons for their behaviors, but there is often an underlying psychological disorder or delusional motivation.

Researchers have discerned five major types of stalkers, and it helps to be aware of the characteristics:

The Rejected

• Results from broken relationships with friends, parents, coworkers, lover
• Stalker seeks reconciliation and/or revenge
• Stalker often feels frustrated, angry, jealous and depressed

The Intimacy Seeker

• Stalker perceives victim as his/her true love and pursues an intimate relationship
• Stalker often has a delusional or other disorder including schizophrenia or mania and may hold morbid infatuations

The Incompetent

• Stalker is often intellectually and socially incompetent
• Desires intimacy with victim but lacks knowledge of courting rituals
• May have stalked others in the past
• Stalker may believe they are entitled to the victim but don't typically feel the victim is attracted to them in return

The Resentful

• Stalker wants to frighten or distress the victim
• Stalker may feel an injustice has occurred against them and seek revenge

The Predatory

• Stalker enjoys the control and power of stalking a victim
• Stalker tries to learn about the victim and may mentally rehearse a plan of attack
• Is more likely than the other categories to have a history of sexual offenses
  
  

How Common is Stalking, Really?
One of the biggest myths of stalking is that it is something that rarely happens, and if it does it happens to celebrities. As such, most people do not take stalking seriously even though it can result in serious crimes like rape and murder.

Yet according to a study of 800 students, one out of five high school and college students have been victims of stalkings.

Linda Manning, director of the Margaret Cuninggim Women's Center at Vanderbilt University, said, "As a general attitude, I think people are amazed when they hear how frequent this kind of situation is ... so we (as a society) deny that it happens; we minimize its impact, and we sort of don't want to know. And I think that's the way in which we don't do a very good job of addressing this."

What to Do if You Are Being Stalked
Being stalked is a very frightening experience, and educating yourself on what to do if you become a victim is your best defense.

Orders of protection issued by law enforcement, which legally prohibit stalkers from contacting their victims, are the first step victims should take, says Valerie Wynn, executive director of a center for victims of domestic and sexual violence in Nashville, Tenn.

According to Wynn, "They do work in 80 percent of cases. They stop the behavior and they keep the victim safe."

Contact your local law enforcement department as a first step to explain your situation and to find out how such an order of protection can be issued.

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