Developmental associations between bullying victimization and suicidal ideation and direct self-injurious behavior in adolescence and early adulthood
Year: 2021
Type: preprint
Study design: Observational Study
Abstract: Background: Bullying, suicide, and self-injury are significant public health issues among young people. Extensive research has documented bullying victimization associations with suicidal ideation and self-injury; however, the modeling approaches used have mostly not addressed the relations between these constructs at the within-person level and it is these links that are critical for testing developmental theories and guiding intervention efforts. This study thus aimed to examine the within-person, bidirectional relations between these constructs in adolescence and early adulthood. Methods: Participants were from the Zurich Project on Social Development from Childhood to Adulthood (z-proso). Random intercept cross-lagged panel models (RI-CLPMs) were employed to evaluate the within-person associations between general and sexual bullying victimization and suicidal ideation and direct self-injurious behavior (D-SIB). Results: There was a positive within-person effect of age 15 general bullying victimization on age 17 suicidal ideation (β=.10) and age 17 suicidal ideation on age 20 general bullying victimization (β=.14), suggesting that these constructs may be reciprocally related. Conclusions: Results imply that general bullying victimization and suicidal ideation can have detrimental effects on each other over developmental time but at different stages. Future studies employing briefer intervals will be needed to investigate short-term dynamics between bullying victimization and suicidality/self-injury.
Language: English
Subfield: Social Psychology
Field: Psychology
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: gold
OpenAlex ID: W4231072210