Cyberbullying and suicide ideation among Hong Kong adolescents: The mitigating effects of life satisfaction with family, classmates and academic results

Abstract

Notably cyberbullying victimization is a known risk factor of suicidal behavior among adolescents. In 2016, in Hong Kong, 36 adolescent suicides were identified, which significantly exceeded the annual average number of around 20 between the period from 2003 to 2015. The present study examines three hypotheses of whether life satisfaction with family, classmates and academic results mitigate the relationship between cyberbullying victimization and suicide ideation. All the mitigation effects were examined by mediation analysis using bootstrapping. A representative cross-sectional data of school-based sample of 3,522 Hong Kong adolescents in 2016 were used. 11.9% and 21.8% of the Hong Kong adolescents reported cyberbullying victimization and suicide ideation, respectively in the past year. After adjusting for gender and age, the present results show a 148% (OR=2.48, 95% CI [1.99, 3.09]) likelihood increase of suicidal ideation on adolescents with cyberbullying victimization. This study further reveals that overall life satisfaction partially mitigates the relationship between cyberbullying victimization and suicide ideation (b = 0.17, 95% CI [0.10, 0.25]). Moreover, combatting the development of suicide ideation in the presence of cyberbullying, life satisfaction with family (b = 0.19, 95% CI [0.12, 0.26]) can confer much more resilience than satisfaction with classmates (b = 0.08, 95% CI [0.05, 0.13]) and academic achievements (b = 0.03, 95% CI [0.01, 0.05]). Therefore, life satisfaction, especially with family relationships, could confer resilience and should be taken into account in suicide preventive programs for adolescents. Copyright © 2019. Published by Elsevier B.V.