Peer victimisation during adolescence and its impact on depression in early adulthood: prospective cohort study in the United Kingdom

Abstract

PartiCiPants 6719 participants who reported on peer victimisation at age 13 years. Main OutCOMe MeasuresDepression defined according to international classification of diseases, 10th revision (ICD-10) criteria, assessed using the clinical interview schedule-revised during clinic assessments with participants when they were aged 18 years. 3898 participants had data on both victimisation by peers at age 13 years and depression at age 18 years. resultsOf the 683 participants who reported frequent victimisation at age 13 years, 101 (14.8%) were depressed according to ICD-10 criteria at 18 years; of the 1446 participants reporting some victimisation at age 13 years, 103 (7.1%) were depressed at age 18 years; and of the 1769 participants reporting no victimisation at age 13 years, 98 (5.5%) were depressed at age 18 years. Compared with children who were not victimised those who were frequently victimised by peers had over a twofold increase in odds of depression (odds ratio 2.96, 95% confidence interval 2.21 to 3.97, P<0.001). This association was slightly reduced when adjusting for confounders (2.32, 1.49 to 3.63, P<0.001). The population attributable fraction suggested that 29.2% (95% confidence interval 10.9% to 43.7%) of depression at age 18 years could be explained by peer victimisation if this were a causal relation. COnClusiOnWhen using observational data it is impossible to be certain that associations are causal. However, our results are consistent with the hypothesis that victimisation by peers in adolescence is associated with an increase in the risk of developing depression as an adult.

Trajectories of childhood adversity and the risk of depression in young adulthood: Results from the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children

“…Depressive symptoms were assessed using the Clinical Interview Schedule-Revised (CIS-R; Lewis, 1994;Lewis, Pelosi, Araya, & Dunn, 1992), which was self-administered via a computerized questionnaire during the 18-year clinic visit (Bowes, Joinson, Wolke, & Lewis, 2015).…”

“…We, therefore, conducted multiple imputations of missing data using fully conditional specification implemented in SAS (version 9.4; SAS Institute Inc., Cary, NC). This method uses an iterative approach to imputation that can flexibly accommodate different variable distributions (Berglund, 2015;van Buuren, 2007) and has been used in several previous studies of the ALSPAC cohort with similar amounts of missing information (Bowes et al, 2015;Culpin, Stapinski, Miles, Araya, & Joinson, 2015;Hammerton et al, 2015;Stapinski et al, 2014). The imputed sample were those with data for at least four of the eight adversity time points from birth through age 11.5 years (n = 9,665; Figure 1); this sample was highly similar to the larger base sample (eTable S3).…”

Trends in bullying victimization by gender among U.S. high school students

“…Bullying victimization is a common social determinant of health among adolescents, with 8% of 15 year olds surveyed in 37 countries reporting at least two episodes of bullying victimization in the previous "few" months (WHO, 2014). Research has shown that bullying victims have a significantly greater risk of depression (Bowes, Joinson, Wolke, & Lewis, 2016), suicide (Bauman et al, 2013;Messias et al, 2014;Mueller et al, 2015;Sibold et al, 2015;Van Geel et al, 2014), substance use (Valdebenito, Ttofi, & Eisner, 2015), sexual risk-taking (Hertz, Everett, Barrios, David-Ferdon, & Holt, 2015), school avoidance (Hutzell & Payne, 2017) and other psychological and behavioral problems (Litwiller & Brausch, 2013;Olweus, 2013).…”

Reliability and validity of the Japan Ijime Scale and estimated prevalence of bullying among fourth through ninth graders: A large‐scale school‐based survey

“…Bullying among children and adolescents is a worldwide phenomenon, often associated with adverse effects on students' mental health, 1,2 school absenteeism, 3 and poor academic achievement. 4,5 In addition to short-term effects, bullying has numerous undesirable long-term behavioral consequences for victims, such as depression, anxiety, self-mutilation, [6][7][8][9][10] suicide, or suicide attempts. 11,12 Even though the term bullying tends to be used in the media as a blanket term that encompasses aggressive or negative acts among individuals, social-scientific studies over the past few decades have focused on how bullying should be defined.…”