Associations Between Bullying and Condition Severity Among Youth With Chronic Health Conditions

Children with chronic conditions are at increased risk of bullying involvement. In addition to examining associations between chronic health conditions and both victimization and perpetration, this study investigated whether condition severity is associated with bullying involvement.

A secondary analysis of the 2018-2019 National Survey of Children's Health was performed. Children ages six-17 (n = 42,716) were classified as perpetrators (if bullied others ≥one-two times/month), victims-only (if victimized ≥one-two times/month and not a perpetrator) or uninvolved in bullying (neither perpetrator nor victim-only). Survey-weighted multinomial logistic regressions were used to investigate associations between bullying involvement and 13 chronic medical and developmental/mental health conditions. For children with conditions associated with being a victim and/or perpetrator, multinomial logistic regressions were used to further investigate associations between condition severity and victimization or perpetration.

All 13 conditions were associated with higher odds of victimization. Seven developmental/mental health conditions were associated with higher odds of perpetration. Condition severity was associated with at least one domain of bullying involvement for one chronic medical and six developmental/mental health conditions. Notably, among children with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, learning disability, or anxiety, condition severity was associated with higher odds of being a victim or bully/bully-victim.

Condition severity may be a risk-factor for bullying involvement for many developmental/mental health conditions. Future condition-specific analyses are needed that directly examine bullying involvement among children with varying severity of individual conditions like attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, learning disability, and anxiety, using a clear operational definition for bullying, objective measures of condition severity, and multiple informants of bullying involvement.