Bullying in secondary school students: Alcohol use, perception of health and the quality of family relationships among bullies and/or their victims

Abstract

Bullying is one of the most worrisome problems among school adolescents. Objective. This paper analyzes the prevalence of several bullying behaviors among adolescent victims and perpetrators in secondary school as well the relationship of those behaviors with alcohol use, perceived health status and the quality of family relationships. It compares the prevalence of these behaviors perpetrators who have been victims of bullying and those who have not. Method. Cross sectional descriptive comparative study. The participants were 468 students whose average age was 12.81 (SD = 0.75) and of whom 49.4% were female. Results. Among the participants 36% have been either a victim or a perpetrator of at least one of the bullying behaviors. The most frequent were insults/taunts. Victims of bullying and those who have tried alcohol are more likely to be perpetrators. In general, bullying behaviors are associated with lower perceived health status and poorer quality of family relationships. Conclusion. We consider contextualizing interventions to prevent bullying all stages of development and to extend our focus beyond the various scenarios in which children and/or adolescents participate, in order to involve families, teaching teams, students themselves and of course the community at large.