Associations among Bullying, Cyberbullying, and Suicide in High School Students

According to the CDC, about fourteen percent of high school students have thought about committing suicide. 

Additionally, the CDC, six percent of high school students claimed to have attempted suicide one year before the survey (Bauman, Toomey, & Walker, 2013). 

Most cases of death among the United States youths are mainly associated with suicide. 

Klomek et al. asserted that victims of bullying and the culprits are more likely to have depression, suicide considerations, and suicide attempts than youths not associated with bullying (Bauman, Toomey, & Walker, 2013). 

Cash and Bridge claimed described that depression is one of the major triggers of suicidal behavior. 

Hinduja and Patchin conducted a study on middle school children to determine the relationship between cyberbullying and suicidal tendencies. 

Technological advancement has led to the use of cyberbullying. 

According to Kaltiala-Heino et al., suicidal tendencies were equally common in both males and females who were either perpetrators or victims of bullying. 

The sample came from a survey on youth risk behavior conducted in Arizona in 2009. 

The study involved 1491 students in high school. 

Fifty –one percent of the participants were males, and forty-nine percent were female. 

The study involved an average of three hundred and fifty students each from the ninth, tenth, eleventh, and twelfth grade (Bauman, Toomey, & Walker, 2013). 

About forty-seven percent of the participants were white. 

Twenty-four percent of the students in the study were Hispanic; fourteen percent were Multiple-Hispanic, and three percent were Multiple-non-Hispanic (Bauman, Toomey, & Walker, 2013). 

Twelve percent of the participants were African American and American Indian. 

Question one—the frequency of being bullied within the school in the past year. 

Question two—the frequency of bullying other students within the school in the past year. 

Question three—the frequency of being cyberbullied in the past year. 

Question four—the frequency of bullying other students electronically through text messaging, chat rooms, and electronic mails in the past year. 

Question five—whether hopelessness or sadness affected ones involvement in usual activities in the past twelve months. 

Question six—the probability of seriously contemplating suicide in the past year. 

Question seven—the probability of having formulated a suicide plan within the past year. 

Question eight—the frequency of really attempting suicide in the past year (Bauman, Toomey, & Walker, 2013). 

The past year recorded a crucial link between depression and gender. 

Females were more likely to open up about their depression than males. 

Suicide considerations were also linked to gender in the past twelve months (Bauman, Toomey, & Walker, 2013). 

Females had a higher probability of admitting they had thought about committing suicide or had a suicide plan. 

Similarly, in the past year, females were more likely to report a suicide attempt compared to males. 

Males were more likely to be the perpetrators of cyberbullying compared to females in the past twelve months (Bauman, Toomey, & Walker, 2013). 

Ninth graders had a higher probability of reporting suicide attempts in the last year compared to students in the other grades. 

Students in the twelfth grade were more open to admitting being victims of cyberbullying compared to students in other grades. 

Males had a higher likelihood of being traditional bullies than females. 

Hispanics were more likely to report depression than the other races. 

Hispanics also had the least probability of admitting they were bullies. 

The study was able to confirm that depression played a role in cases of suicide tendencies, bullying, and cyberbullying. 

Gender-specific strategies will help to minimize bullying and suicide cases. 

Suicidal behaviors in high school students were majorly linked to their past cyberbullying and traditional bullying experiences (Bauman, Toomey, & Walker, 2013). 

Suicide attempts in females were mainly associated with depression suffered from cyberbullying experiences. 

A combination of Suicidal tendencies or depression and bullying is worse than depression or suicidal tendencies alone (Bauman, Toomey, & Walker, 2013). 

The study incorporated the use of self-report, a method that is subject to bias. 

Future studies should use other types of data collection techniques obtained from teachers, peers, and parents (Bauman, Toomey, & Walker, 2013). 

Programs should be set up to deal with the concerns of both the perpetrators and victims of bullying.