Bullying victimization and externalizing and internalizing symptoms among in-school adolescents from five ASEAN countries

Abstract

The study aimed to assess the relationship between bullying victimization and adverse health or psychosocial problems among in-school adolescents from five Southeast Asian countries. The sample consisted of 33,184 school-going children, mean age 14.6 years (SD = 1.7), from Indonesia, Laos, Philippines, Thailand and Timor-Leste that took part in the cross-sectional “Global School-based Student Health Survey” (GSHS) in 2015. Results indicate 18.6% of the students reported infrequent (1–2 days/month) and 12.0% frequent (3–30 days/month) past-month bullying victimization. Among different types of bullying victimization, the most prevalent was psychological (13.5%), followed by other (5.6%), physical (3.6%) and social (1.3%). In adjusted Poisson regression analysis, bullying victimization is associated with tobacco, alcohol and drug use, physically attacked, in physical fight, injury, truancy and poor hand hygiene behaviour, anxiety, loneliness, suicidal ideation, suicide attempt, no close friends, sedentary behaviour, underweight and overweight or obesity. This study extends previous findings from mainly high-income countries on the relationship between bullying victimization and a large number of adverse outcomes in adolescents in Southeast Asia.