Socio-emotional and clinical profile of bullied youth in a clinic setting: assessing bullying-related functional impairment

Community and school research has identified bullying as a pervasive and significant problem for school-age youth. Less emphasis has been placed on bullying-related impairment in clinic settings, but treatment-seeking youth with a history of bullying may have specific needs that deserve attention. Limited information regarding the clinical profile and socio-emotional functioning of bullied youth leave clinicians with little information to guide treatment planning and services. The present study completed retrospective interviews with youth and young adults who had previously sought treatment for anxiety and/or depression at a university-based outpatient clinic. Participants (N=85; youth = 60; adults = 25) completed diagnostic and symptom assessment at the original point of clinic contact and completed bullying-specific interview procedures nine months to eight years after clinic contact (M = 4.23 years). The majority of participants (51.7%) endorsed being bullied at least once or twice in the year prior to seeking mental health services. However, bullied and non-bullied youth did not differ on most measures of anxiety and depression symptoms, according to youth, father, and mother reports. This study also examined the psychometric properties of the Multidimensional Bullying Impairment Scale (MBIS), a self-report scale designed to assess functional impairment related to bullying. Results suggested the MBIS and its a priori subscales had strong internal reliability. Exploratory factor analysis supported a five-factor model, but further analysis suggested that a single total score might represent the construct best. Correlations amongst functional impairment and anxiety and depression symptoms highlighted interesting patterns. Functional impairment was found to be strongly related to depression and moderately correlated with anxiety symptoms. As predicted, bullying related impairment was not found to be positively correlated with externalizing symptoms. Together, results suggest the MBIS may be a promising tool to evaluate bullying-related functional impairment that has concurrent and discriminative validity. Overall, these findings confirm that bullying is a pervasive problem among service-users and provide broad implications in the assessment and treatment of anxious and depressed youth. Implications of these findings for clinical practice and future research are discussed.Psy.D.Includes bibliographical referencesby Alyssa John