Bullying victimization is strongly associated with increased psychological distress and suicide in adolescents and poor family functioning. Knowledge of gender differences influencing these factors will improve the prevention of mental problems and suicide in victimized adolescents. A total of 1685 Mexican secondary students, 12–17 years old (m = 13.65), of whom 54% were girls, responded to a standardized scale questionnaire to analyze such differences. Based on the statistical analysis, girls reported significantly lower family functioning and higher psychological distress and suicidal ideation than boys. The cluster analysis classified adolescents into high (5.78%), moderate (24.07%), and no-victimization (69.76%) groups. Boys predominated in the high (3.1%) and moderate-victimization (12.4%) clusters, and girls in the no-victimization group (39.51%). Multivariate statistical analyses found significant differences between the three groups, with the highest means of psychological distress and suicidal ideation and lowest family functioning in the high-victimization group. Only for suicidal ideation, there was an interaction between gender and the degree of victimization, with girls showing a higher increase of suicidal ideation than boys in the same cluster. Conclusions: Early detection and intervention in bullying-victimized adolescents, aiming to decrease psychological distress and suicidal ideation and strengthen family functioning, should consider contextual gender differences for effective prevention of mental health problems and suicide in adolescents.

Comunicación con los padres, malestar psicológico y actitud hacia la autoridad en adolescentes mexicanos: su influencia en la victimización escolar

This transversal study over a random representative sample of 1687 Mexican students attending public and private secondary schools (54% girls, 12–17 years old, M = 13.65. DT = 1.14) aimed to analyze psychosocial differences between victims and non-victims of bullying from the bioecological model. It included individual variables (ontosystem), familiar, community, and scholar factors (microsystem), and gender (macrosystem) to perform a multivariate discriminant analysis and a logistic regression analysis. The discriminant analysis found that psychological distress, offensive communication with mother and father, and a positive attitude toward social norms transgression characterized the high victimization cluster. For the non-victims, the discriminant variables were community implication, positive attitude toward institutional authority, and open communication with the mother. These variables allowed for correctly predicting membership in 76% of the cases. Logistic regression analysis found that psychological distress, offensive communication with the father, and being a boy increased the probability of high victimization, while a positive attitude toward authority, open communication with the mother, and being a girl decrease this probability. These results highlight the importance of open and offensive communication between adolescents and their parents on psychological distress, attitude toward authority, community implication, and bullying victimization.

El objetivo del presente estudio fue analizar la participación de los adolescentes en conductas violentas a partir de un modelo estructural, en una muestra aleatoria y estratificada de 1498 estudiantes de 5º y 6º de primaria, y de los tres niveles de secundaria de escuelas públicas de Puerto Vallarta, Jalisco, México. Se utilizaron cuestionarios de auto-informe con respuestas Likert, midiendo violencia escolar, funcionamiento familiar y actitud hacia la autoridad. Las conductas violentas correlacionan negativamente con el buen funcionamiento familiar (valores altos de unión/ apoyo). El funcionamiento familiar correlacionó negativamente con la conducta violenta de forma indirecta, a través de la actitud hacia la autoridad institucional y la transgresión de normas. Finalmente se discuten los resultados.

To understand the factors related to suicidal ideation in university students, we examined individual and microsystemic variables with an ecological model organizing bidirectional influences between different dimensions. Suicidal ideation, psychological distress, multidimensional self-concept, loneliness, community social support, life satisfaction, family functioning, bullying victimization, and problematic use of virtual social networks were measured in a sample of 376 Mexican university students (67% women) from 18 to 34 years of age (M = 20.8). Data were collected in March 2020, before mandatory confinement for COVID started in Mexico. Discriminant analyses showed that psychological distress, loneliness, self-concept, life satisfaction, family functioning, internet violence/rejection, and informal social support predicted belonging to high or no suicidal ideation groups with 88% accuracy. Only psychological distress and family self-concept predicted suicidal ideation in multilinear regression analyses. There were differences by gender in multilinear regression, with family self-concept significant for women and physical self-concept, but not family self-concept for boys. Conclusions: Early Suicide prevention in universities should include periodic screening of psychological distress, loneliness, and virtual social media use to identify students that need further evaluation and intervention. University-based strategies of mental health promotion that strengthen family relationships and the sense of community, including gender-sensitive orientation, could enhance the effect of protective factors.