Bullying behavior in relation to psychiatric disorders and physical health among adolescents: A clinical cohort of 508 underage inpatient adolescents in Northern Finland

The aim was to investigate the association of bullying behavior with psychiatric disorders and physical health in a sample of adolescent psychiatric patients, as there have to our knowledge been no previous studies using actual psychiatric diagnoses examining this relationship in boys and girls. We studied 508 Finnish adolescents (age 12–17) admitted to psychiatric inpatient care between April 2001 and March 2006 from the geographically large area of Northern Finland. The Schedule for Affective Disorder and Schizophrenia for School-Age Children, Present and Lifetime (K-SADS-PL) was used to obtain psychiatric diagnoses of adolescents according to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fourth Edition (DSM-IV) and information on bullying behavior. Logistic regression analyses showed that having an externalizing disorder increased the likelihood of being a bully or a bully-victim (i.e. a person who is both a bully and a victim of bullying) among both the boys (odds ratio, OR = 14.4, P = 0.001) and the girls (OR = 10.0, P < 0.001). In addition, having an internalizing disorder increased the likelihood of being a victim of bullying among the boys (OR = 3.4, P = 0.008), but not the girls. Chronic somatic diseases were also significantly associated with being bullied among the boys (OR = 2.5, P = 0.041). Our results suggest that adolescents who are involved in bullying behavior should be evaluated psychiatrically, as this might be an early marker of psychiatric disorders.