Abstract
Victimization by peers and siblings is associated with poorer mental health outcomes in adolescence. What is less clear is whether mental health outcomes improve if victimization experiences cease (e.g., being victimized in primary school but not secondary school). This study aims to explore how changes in victimization experiences are associated with changes in mental health outcomes in early adolescence. Data are from 13,912 participants in the Millennium Cohort Study (MCS), a nationally representative cohort of individuals born in the UK. Self-reported victimization by peers and siblings, as well as mental health outcomes (depressive symptoms, life satisfaction, self-esteem, and body image), were collected at age 11 and age 14. Victimization at either time point was associated with poorer mental health across the range of outcomes, with effects largest for those who were consistently victimized. Those who reported increasing victimization had greater deterioration in their mental health compared with their peers who were never victimized. Conversely, children whose victimization decreased showed similar mental health development over this period as those who were never victimized. There was a cumulative effect of victimization by peers and siblings, with effect sizes generally larger for experiences with peers. Victimization in adolescence is associated with enduring reductions in mental health. Nonetheless, the promising outcomes associated with reductions in victimization suggest the potential for bullying interventions in schools to limit the deterioration in mental health in victimized groups.
Highlights
ObjectivesThis study aims to explore how changes in victimization experiences are associated with changes in mental health outcomes in early adolescence
Bullying victimization is a specific form of repeated aggressive behaviour with an intent to cause harm that occurs in the context of a power imbalance [1]
Participants were more likely to report being victimized by siblings compared to peers. In relation to both peer and sibling victimization, the largest group was formed by children who were not victimized at either age 11 or age 14. For those children that were victimized, 12% experienced a decrease in peer victimization and 23% experienced a decrease in sibling victimization between age 11 and age 14, while 7% experienced an increase in peer and 9% experience an increase in sibling victimization
Summary
This study aims to explore how changes in victimization experiences are associated with changes in mental health outcomes in early adolescence. In the current study—the largest to our knowledge that examines both sibling and peer victimization and the only study to examine both sources of victimization longitudinally—we aim to examine how changes in victimization across both home and school are associated with changes in a range of indices of mental health between 11 and 14 years of age. Given the aim of this paper was to estimate the potential benefits of reductions in frequent victimization, we created two separate categorical groups for peer and sibling victimization experiences by combining respective responses from the age 11 and 14 surveys, so that each participant was categorized as experiencing either: consistently low victimization, consistently high victimization, increasing victimization, and decreasing victimization across both peer and sibling victimization [15, 19]
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