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The current research examines the association between bullying victimization, binge drinking, and marijuana use among adolescents. We seek to determine if this association varies based on the type of bullying experienced, traditional or cyberbullying. We used data from the 2013 Youth Risk Behavior Survey, a nationally representative sample of high school students in the United States. The dependent variables were binge drinking and marijuana use. Our key independent variable, bullying victimization, included both traditional and cyberbullying. We estimated logistic regression models, by gender, to examine the association between bullying victimization and substance use. About 25% of the sample reported bullying victimization, including 10.39% for only traditional, 5.47% for only cyber, and 9.26% for both. Traditional bullying was not significantly associated with binge drinking, but was negatively related to marijuana use. Being the victim of cyberbullying and both types of bullying was significantly associated with binge drinking and marijuana use. We also found important gender differences. The current research adds to a growing list of studies that suggests that cyberbullying is associated with more adverse outcomes than traditional bullying. Bullying prevention and intervention efforts should focus on reducing cyberbullying and providing adolescents with the skills needed to effectively deal with cyberbullying.

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Research suggests that minority children with one mental health condition are more likely than White children to have a secondary mental health condition. However, there are no current studies that test the interaction between race and family resources to examine this apparent racial difference in mental health conditions in children. Yet research suggests that family resources vary by race/ethnicity. This study examines the interaction between family structure and socioeconomic status by race and ethnicity to understand how it predicts the number of mental health conditions among children. Our findings are consistent with the existing literature that children in resource-poor families (single parent, step-parent families, and lower income families) have higher counts of mental health conditions. Yet we also found that children in resource-rich families (two-parent biological families with higher levels of income) in some cases also had higher counts of mental health conditions and this varied by race/ethnicity.

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