Vicious cycle of emotional maltreatment and bullying perpetration/victimization among early adolescents: Depressive symptoms as a mediator.

Abstract Rationale Emotional maltreatment and bullying (including both bullying perpetration and bullying victimization) are two prevalent and highly related problems among children and adolescents worldwide. The adverse consequences of emotional maltreatment and bullying behoove researchers to identify their causal mechanisms. Objective We examined the reciprocal relations between emotional maltreatment and bullying perpetration/victimization and whether depressive symptoms functioned as mediator of the relations, after separating within-person effects from between-person effects. Methods A total of 4273 Chinese early adolescents (45.2% girls; Mage = 9.90 years, SD = 0.73) participated in a five-wave longitudinal study with 6-month intervals. Results Results from random intercept cross-lagged panel modeling showed: (a) emotional maltreatment and bullying perpetration were bidirectionally related; (b) bullying victimization directly predicted emotional maltreatment, but not vice versa; (c) emotional maltreatment indirectly predicted bullying perpetration/victimization via depressive symptoms; and (d) bullying victimization indirectly predicted emotional maltreatment via depressive symptoms. Conclusions These findings provided evidence for bidirectional spillover effects in the family and peer domains, demonstrating that early adolescents may become trapped in a vicious cycle of negative relationships, directly or indirectly, via their depressive symptoms. To prevent a downward spiral, findings suggested that bullying interventions need to address family and peer relationships as well as individual psychological well-being simultaneously to be most effective.