Effects of Victimization on Depression: How Children Respond to Being Bullied

Abstract

Many victimized children suffer negative psychological outcomes as a result of being bullied. One prominent consequence is that of depression. In a cross-sectional study about childhood victimization and depression among elementary school students (N=421), children completed a free response survey regarding how he or she would respond to relational, physical and verbal victimization respectively as well as a depression inventory and self report of victimization history. Two categorization systems (RSQ and CRTB) classified the responses to see whether certain responses moderated the effect of depression for a particular set of children. Results suggest that certain responses to victimization scenarios moderate the relation between victimization history and depression.