Bullying in Hispanic Early Adolescent Girls: The Role of Depression, Victimization, and Puberty

Introduction: School bullying increases anxiety and depression among adolescents. U.S. Hispanic adolescent’s girls experience depression and suicidal ideations disproportionately more than other, non-Hispanic adolescent girls, and are more likely to report suicidal behavior. Hispanic girls who have been victims of bullying are more likely to attempt suicide than Hispanic girls who have not been victims of bullying. The purpose of this study is to assess the relationship between bullying and depression among Hispanic early adolescent girls and possible pubertal predictors to inform bulling prevention activities.

Methods: Data from the JUEGA pregnancy prevention intervention study were used to estimate bullying prevalence and identify predictors of bullying perpetration for a sample of Hispanic early adolescent girls. Using logistic regression, we analyzed self-report data for bullying victim and perpetration experiences, pubertal development, and depressive symptoms collected from 203 seventh grade girls enrolled in low income, predominately Hispanic Miami-Dade county public schools.

Results: Nearly half the sample reported perpetrating bullying behaviors (45.8%) while more than two-thirds reported having been a victim of bullying (68.2%). Being a victim of bullying (OR= 18.20, CI= 6.30-52.57), reporting higher depressive symptoms (OR=3.23, CI= 1.53-6.80), and developing breasts (OR=3.41, CI=1.12-10.45) were associated with elevated odds of bullying others. Growing taller was associated with decreased odds of being a bully (OR=0.35, CI=0.13-0.96) and was not associated with being a victim.

Conclusions: The high rates of bullying reported here are consistent with previous research with older adolescent Hispanic girls, and underscore the need for effective bullying interventions for early adolescents. Most importantly, these results suggest a cycle of violence involving victimization and perpetration with victimization experience increasing the likelihood of perpetration nearly 20 fold. School based zero tolerance policies may stop this cycle from playing out in school settings. However, these findings also argue for teaching early adolescents skills for managing negative affect associated with depression and being bullied in other or previous contexts as a bullying prevention strategy. More research is needed regarding the role that puberty development plays in bullying. It is possible that developing breasts is associated with unwanted sexual attention which may contribute to negative affect. In contrast, growing taller could elicit positive asexual attention contributing to positive affect. In addition, growing taller may make the adolescent less of a target for bullying.