Physical, Social, and Cyberbullying: Relationships with Adolescents’ Psychosocial Factors

Extant research on the relationship between bullying and mental health have been conducted primarily on samples from western countries. Thus, this study examined the association between bullying and mental health outcomes for a sample of 1347 Korean adolescents. First, results suggested that adolescents who reported having been bullied recently were most likely to say “people have spread rumors about me” and then “people have teased me,” both of which are types of social bullying. Those who reported having bullied someone recently also stated that, most of the times, they socially bullied someone by “teasing” or “ignoring” the person. Second, social bullying was found to be a significant predictor of all mental health factors except interpersonal communication of bullied victims, including self-esteem, depression, hope, life satisfaction, and school membership. Third, social bullying was also found to predict depression, hope, life satisfaction, and school membership of bullies, but not selfesteem, depression, and interpersonal communication. Overall, bullying experiences of both bullied victims and bullies themselves, especially types of social bullying, are significantly associated with negative mental health outcomes.