The relationship between bullying, learning disorders and psychiatric comorbidity

Abstract

Background Both learning disorders and bullying are major sources of public concern. Children with learning disorders often suffer from social rejection, potentially rendering them more susceptible to bullying involvement. Bullying involvement leads to a higher risk towards developing various problems including self-harm and suicidality. Past research on whether learning disorders are childhood bullying risk factors yielded inconsistent results. Methods The current study used path analyses on a representative sample of 2,925 German 3rd and 4th grades to examine whether learning disorders are a direct bullying risk factor, or whether their impact depends on psychiatric comorbidity. More so, the current study sought to examine whether associations differ between children with and without learning disorders, compare different bullying roles (i.e., only victim, only bully, or bully-victim), compare gender, and control for IQ and socioeconomic status. Results Results indicated that learning disorders are not a direct but rather an indirect childhood risk factor for bully-victim involvement, depending on psychiatric comorbidity with internalizing or externalizing disorders. Regarding the comparison between the samples of children with and without learning disorders, an overall difference and a difference in the path between spelling and externalizing disorders emerged. No difference for different bullying roles (i.e., only victim, only bully) emerged. Negligible differences emerged when IQ and socioeconomic status were controlled. An overall gender difference emerged, compatible with past research, indicating higher bullying involvement among boys compared to girls. Conclusion Children with learning disorders are at a higher risk of having psychiatric comorbidity, which in turn renders them at a higher risk of bullying involvement. Implications for bullying interventions and school professionals are deduced.

Profiling Experiences of Bullying in the Elementary School: The Role of Gender

“…Differences in content were also observed; for example, Class 3 had high levels of physical aggression (e.g., damaging property, forcing, and stealing) and this class was comprised of mostly males (63% vs. 37). This finding agreed with past studies, pointing to the high prevalence of aggressive incidences and perpetrator behaviors by boys compared with girls [ 61 , 69 , 70 , 71 ]. Item-level gender differences pointed to significantly elevated experiences of bullying for males compared with females across the board of bullying behaviors and types.…”

Cyclic evaluation of web-based public health interventions

“…Goals represent the target pages or elements that developers intend for end-users to interact with, while funnels depict different paths users can take to reach these elements. Collected data then reveals the paths users take, identifying potential obstacles or drop-off points (Crutzen et al, 2012;Weinreich et al, 2023).…”

“…For instance, a health professional might check symptoms of an STI but may be less likely to proceed to the STI test page. Pop-up questionnaires could be used to gain insight into the demographic background of end-users (Weinreich et al, 2023), and use data could then be segmented by enduser group. This not only makes the data about the target audience more meaningful but also creates a distinct dataset of other users, which, if substantial in terms of data points, could be equally valuable for analysis.…”