Stigma-based bullying interventions: A systematic review

Abstract

Youth living with socially devalued characteristics (e.g., minority sexual orientation, race, and/or ethnicity; disability; obesity) experience frequent bullying. This stigma-based bullying undermines youths' wellbeing and academic achievement, with lifelong consequences. The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine recommends developing, implementing, and evaluating evidence-based interventions to address stigma-based bullying. To characterize the existing landscape of these interventions, we conducted a systematic review of stigma-based bullying interventions targeting youth in any country published in the peer-reviewed literature between 2000 and 2015. Our analysis was guided by a theoretical framework of stigma-based bullying, which describes stigma-related factors at the societal, structural, interpersonal, and individual levels that lead to stigma-based bullying. We screened 8,240 articles and identified 22 research studies describing 21 interventions addressing stigma-based bullying. We found that stigma-based bullying interventions are becoming more numerous, yet are unevenly distributed across stigmas, geographic locations, and types of organizations. We further found that these interventions vary in the extent to which they incorporate theory and have been evaluated with a wide range of research designs and types of data. We recommend that future work address stigma-based bullying within multicomponent interventions, adopt interdisciplinary and theory-based approaches, and include rigorous and systematic evaluations. Intervening specifically on stigma-related factors is essential to end stigma-based bullying and improve the wellbeing of youth living with socially devalued characteristics.

Multiple forms of discrimination and internalized stigma compromise retention in HIV care among adolescents: findings from a South African cohort

“…Moreover, the broader literature on bullying points to promising school‐based interventions focused on reducing maltreatment between peers [44]. But recent evidence suggests that stigma‐based bullying is worse for young people’s health outcomes than other types of bullying and that interventions require unique approaches [45]. More research on this is clearly needed.…”

LGBQ Youth’s Experiences of General and Bias-Based Bullying Victimization: the Buffering Role of Supportive School and Community Environments

“…Schools can establish GSAs if not already present; these groups often conduct awareness and education events as well as advocate within the school for LGBTQ issues. Further, programs that focus specifically on bias-based bullying may be needed, in addition to general bullying prevention programs, to address stigma present within schools and communities (Earnshaw et al 2017(Earnshaw et al , 2018. Of note, we did not find that LGBTQ-supportive schools or communities protected LGBQ youth from general bullying victimization.…”

Intersections Between Multiple Forms of Bias-Based Bullying Among Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Queer Youth

“…In the context of bias-based bullying victimization, intersectionality can be applied to understand intersections that may be particularly vulnerable to multiple types of biasbased victimization and, therefore, are important to move from margins to center in bullying prevention efforts (Earnshaw et al 2018;Espelage et al 2018;Gower et al 2018b). Intersectionality focuses on macro-level systems of oppression that may also be experienced at the individual level (e.g., interpersonal discrimination and bias-based victimization).…”

“…Intersectionality focuses on macro-level systems of oppression that may also be experienced at the individual level (e.g., interpersonal discrimination and bias-based victimization). Frameworks for understanding bias-based victimization also call for this multilevel attention to both individual and macro-level processes related to these biases (Earnshaw et al 2018). To consider how interlocking systems of oppression may be experienced among LGBQ youth via bias-based bullying, in the next section, we review previous research on LGBQ youths' experiences of multiple forms of bias-based bullying.…”

“…Bias-based bullying victimization is defined as direct physical harm, verbal threats, social exclusion, and humiliation from peers (Hymel and Swearer 2015), which can be attributed to some type of bias or stigma (e.g., heterosexist, sexist, cis-sexist, racial-ethnic, and able-ist biases). However, bullying prevention efforts often focus on general, rather than bias-based, bullying (Earnshaw et al 2018;Shetgiri et al 2015), and those efforts that do target bias-based bullying tend to focus on a single type (e.g., heterosexist victimization alone), rather than targeting overlapping bias-based bullying (Earnshaw et al 2018). Yet, the reality is that LGBQ youth may simultaneously experience other types, including racist, cis-sexist, and able-ist bullying (Bucchianeri et al 2016;Gower et al 2018b;Kahn and Lindstrom 2015).…”