School bullying and symptoms of depression

Abstract

The purpose of the present study is to explore the relationship between bullying and depressive symptoms in adolescents. Methods: The research included 284 teenagers, of whom 145 (51.1%) were females and 139 (48.9%) males, aged between 13 and 18 years with an average age of (M = 15.5) years and a Standard Deviance 1.2 (SD=1.2) The data were collected through the use of Children’s Depression Inventory (CDI, Kovacs, 1978) and the Reciprocal Relationship Assessment Questionnaire (PRQ) (Rigby & Slee, 1994) and further analysed with the SPSS. 18 package. As the distribtution was not normal, Spearman’s rho and analysis of frequencies were used to test the links between bullying behaviors and depression. The results revealed a significant statistical relationship between the frequency of adolescent victimization and their depressive symptoms (Sig 2 tailed = 0.00 <0.05), so children who were more frequently prey to bullying behaviors experienced more depressive symptoms (0.3 < r = 0.485 <0.6). The relationship between victimizing behaviors and depressive symptoms in adolescents seems to be unaffected by such variables as gender, age, or academic performance.The findings revealed that adolescents assuming either of the role ie the victim’s or the aggressor’s were prone to developing depressive symptoms. Conclusions: Being either a victim or bully seems to increase the likehood of beng affected by depression. In this aspect, variables such as age, gender and academic achievement seem to have no significant effect on the bullying-depression binomial function.