Bullying and bystander behaviour and health outcomes among adolescents in Ireland

Abstract

BackgroundLittle is known about the impact of being a bystander to bullying. This study compared health outcomes among bullies, victims and bystanders, and investigated actions taken by bystanders when they saw bullying.MethodParticipants included 7522 students aged 12–18 years that completed self-report questionnaires in the 2013/2014 Health Behaviour in School-aged Children survey. Binary logistic regression models (controlled for bully, victim, bystander status and demographic variables) were used to investigate the associations between participation in bullying as a bully, victim and bystander and health outcomes.ResultsOverall, 13.3% of adolescents reported being a bully, 25.1% reported being a victim and 30.5% reported that they saw bullying, in the last couple of months. Bystanders were significantly more likely to experience psychological symptoms (OR 1.355), somatic symptoms (OR 1.392) and low life satisfaction (OR 1.268) than those who were not bystanders. Helping the victim was significantly associated with experiencing psychological symptoms (OR 1.240), somatic symptoms (OR 1.251) and low life satisfaction (OR 1.198). Being a bully was significantly associated with experiencing psychological symptoms (OR 1.382) and not having excellent health (OR 1.252). Victims were significantly more likely to experience psychological symptoms (OR 2.437), somatic symptoms (OR 2.364), low life satisfaction (OR 2.564) and not having excellent health (OR 1.559).ConclusionIn Ireland, being a bystander to bullying is more prevalent in schools than bullying perpetration or victimisation. The impact of being a bystander to bullying needs to be highlighted and included in intervention development.

Gender-specific substance use patterns and associations with individual, family, peer, and school factors in 15-year-old Portuguese adolescents: a latent class regression analysis

“…The answer categories were ‘haven’t’, ‘once or twice’, ‘2 or 3 times a month’, ‘about once a week’, and ‘several times a week’. Responses were dichotomised into 0 = never, and 1 = at least once (as in [20, 26]). Fighting was measured by asking ‘During the past 12 months, how many times were you in a physical fight?’, with the following response categories: ‘I have not been’, ‘1 time’, ‘2 times’, ‘3 times’, ‘4 times or more’.…”

Examining the Potential Mental Health Costs of Defending Victims of Bullying: a Longitudinal Analysis

“…According to the social-ecological diathesis stress model of bullying (Swearer & Hymel, 2015 ), involvement in bullying is a negative life event that may contribute to psychopathology (e.g., internalizing and externalizing problems), depending on an individual’s personal characteristics, life experiences, and the quality of their social environments. Indeed, there is growing evidence that simply witnessing bullying is associated with increased psychological distress among bystanders (e.g., Callaghan, et al, 2019 ; Janosz et al, 2008 ; Lambe et al, 2017 ; Rivers et al, 2009 ). However, it is not yet clear whether youth who actually stand up for victims experience poorer mental health outcomes.…”

“…For example, compared to passive bystanders, youth who defend are more likely to report experiencing negative emotions like guilt (Mazzone et al, 2016 ; Pronk et al, 2016 ) and anger (Lambe et al, 2017 ; Trach & Hymel, 2019 ) while witnessing bullying. Similarly, after controlling for demographic characteristics and previous involvement as a bully or victim, bystanders who reported helping a victim of bullying in the past 2–3 months also reported experiencing elevated psychological symptoms, whereas doing nothing in response to witnessed bullying was not associated with any mental health symptoms (Callaghan et al, 2019 ). Self-reported defending has also been positively associated with concurrently measured internalizing symptoms (Evans et al, 2019 ; Jenkins et al, 2017 ; Jenkins & Frederick, 2017 ; Wu et al, 2016 ).…”

“…Although compelling evidence suggests that encouraging youth to intervene and defend victims might be an effective way to reduce bullying (e.g., Hawkins et al, 2001 ; Salmivalli et al, 2011 ) and improve outcomes for victims (Ma & Chen, 2019 ; Sainio et al, 2011 ; Williford et al, 2012 ), there has been speculation that defending a victimized peer is a potentially risky behavior that may contribute to poorer mental health outcomes among youth who defend (e.g., Lambe et al, 2017 ). Although defending has been linked with several indicators of positive adjustment among youth, including higher self-esteem, greater peer acceptance and social support, and elevated social status (e.g., Lambe et al, 2019 ; Ma et al, 2019 ; Pöyhönen et al, 2010 ; van der Ploeg et al, 2017 ), several cross-sectional studies have identified a positive association between defending and youth reports of psychosomatic and internalizing problems (Callaghan et al, 2019 ; Jenkins & Fredrick, 2017 ; Lambe et al, 2017 ). Yet due to a dearth of longitudinal studies, it remains unclear whether defending actually places youth at increased risk for developing mental health difficulties.…”

The Role of Emotional Intelligence on Psychological Adjustment and Peer Victimization in a Sample of Spanish Adolescents

“…Like self-concept, wellbeing has been also negatively associated with victimization in adolescence (Callaghan et al, 2015;Weng et al, 2017;Gini et al, 2018;Cañas et al, 2020). Additionally, some works have indicated that victimization has a negative influence on the victims' wellbeing (Låftman and Modin, 2017;Callaghan et al, 2019), so it is not surprising that bullying victims are significantly more likely to experience low life satisfaction. For this reason, some investigations into youth violence have considered victimization as a salient risk factor for poor life satisfaction in adolescence (Méndez-Giménez et al, 2017;Gini et al, 2018).…”