Bullying and Suicide in High School Students: Findings from the 2015 California Youth Risk Behavior Survey

Background and Purpose: 

School bullying and cyberbullying have been linked to suicidal behaviors among victimized students. Researchers have also found that bullying may have an indirect effect on suicide through depressive symptoms, alcohol and tobacco use, and illicit drug use (e.g., Lardier et al., 2016). However, how these effects may differ across racial and ethnic groups remains relatively unknown.

This study aims to answer the following questions: (1) Does bullying (including school bullying and cyberbullying) affect suicide? And (2) Does bullying have an indirect effect on suicide through sadness, use of alcohol, tobacco, and marijuana (UATM), and use of other illicit drugs (UOID)? In order to address racial/ethnic differences, the study examines the two questions using different racial/ethnic groups.

Methods: 

Data are from the 2015 California Youth Risk Behavior Survey (CYRBS), which was representative of all high school students in California. The analytic sample consisted of 1,765 Californian youth attending grades 9-12. The largest racial/ethnic group was Hispanic (30%), followed by White (27%), mixed-race (27%), and Asian and Pacific Islanders (15%). A slight majority were male students (51%). In the youth self-report questionnaire, suicide was assessed by three yes/no questions about youth’s suicidal thoughts, planning, and attempts in the past 12 months. Bullying was measured by whether youth reported being bullied on school property or being electronically bullied during the past 12 months. Sadness was gauged by youth’s feelings about sadness or hopelessness in the past 12 months. Youth also reported UATM in the past 30 days and life-time UOID (e.g., cocaine and heroin). All major variables were dummy coded. Sex, age, and grade level were included as covariates. Logistic regression with sampling weights was used to analyze the CYRBS data in Stata 13.

Results: 

Being bullied was associated with increased odds of suicide across all racial/ethnic groups (OR = 7.37, 3.67, 5.07, 3.50 for white, Hispanic, Asian and mixed-race youth, respectively; p < .01 for all groups). In addition, sadness mediated the relationship between bullying and suicide in youth of all groups (Sobel z ranging from 3.20 to 4.83, p < .01; percentage of the effect mediated ranging from 38.7% to 55.1%). However, UATM and UOID did not mediate the relationship between bullying and suicide among any youth group. Nevertheless, UATM predicted suicide among Hispanic youth (OR = 2.12, p = .001) but not other groups; and UOID predicted suicide among White (OR = 2.75, p = . 01) and Hispanic youth (OR = 1.88, p < .05) but not the other two groups.

Conclusions and Implications: 

These findings suggest that bullying poses a major threat to the mental health and well-being of high school students. Current school-based prevention and intervention efforts may not be adequate in meeting the needs of bullied youth. Social work professionals who work with bullied youth need to consider the effect of sadness in service planning and provision by treating depression more effectively. They also need to develop and implement services that address the racial/ethnic differences in alcohol, tobacco, marijuana, and other drug use.