Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2024 Dec 16:15:1417960.
doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2024.1417960. eCollection 2024.

The relationship between adolescent sleep duration and exposure to school bullying: the masking effect of depressive symptoms

Rushuang Zeng #  1 , Dang Han #  2 , Wei Du  1   3 , Jing Wen  4 , Youxian Zhang  1 , Zongyu Li  1 , Qun Du  5 , Yan Qi  4 , Yu Li  1   2 , Jia He  1   2
Affiliations

The relationship between adolescent sleep duration and exposure to school bullying: the masking effect of depressive symptoms

Rushuang Zeng et al. Front Psychol. .

Abstract

Background: Adolescents who suffer from school bullying are often accompanied by problems such as sleep disorders and depression. However, it remains unclear how depressive symptoms and sleep assessments such as sleep duration interact in the specific mechanisms of exposure to school bullying.

Objective: To understand the role of sleep duration, depressive symptoms on school bullying in adolescents and the mediating role of sleep duration in this context.

Methods: A total of 1730 adolescents were selected from Xinjiang province, China by stratified cluster random sampling in 2020, and their demographic characteristics, exposure to school bullying, depressive symptoms, and sleep duration were investigated by questionnaire. Multifactorial logistics regression analyses were performed to examine the effects of sleep duration and depressive symptoms on school bullying. Furthermore, the bootstrap method was used to explore the mediating effect and masking effect of depressive symptoms between sleep duration and school bullying by PROCESS macro in SPSS 26.0.

Results: A total of 16.42% of adolescents suffered from school bullying and 12.25% showed depressive symptoms. Multifactorial logistics regression analyses revealed that possible depression and depression increase the risk of exposure to school bullying compared to normal group. Sleep duration less than 8 h and between 8 and 10 h are protective factors for exposure to three types of school bullying relative to those who sleep more than 10 h. Additionally, sleep duration affected exposure to school bullying through depressive symptoms (β = 0.011) and depressive symptoms masked the effect between sleep duration and exposure to school bullying with an effect of 60.17%. The masking effect remained stable after adjusting for gender, age, ethnicity, body mass index, and exercise intensity (indirect effect = -0.017, 95%CI: -0.026 to -0.009).

Conclusion: Depressive symptoms may be a risk factor for exposure to school bullying, while moderate and inadequate sleep duration may be protective factors for exposure to all three types of school bullying simultaneously. The effect of sleep duration on adolescents' exposure to school bullying was affected by the masking effect of depressive symptoms, and appropriate sleep duration and a positive and healthy mindset were beneficial in reducing the occurrence of school bullying.

Keywords: adolescents; depressive symptoms; masking effect; school bullying; sleep duration.

PubMed Disclaimer

Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Mediated model of depressive symptoms on sleep duration and exposure to school bullying. Notes: Estimated path coefficients are referred to a, b, c, and c’. Values shown are standardized coefficients *p < 0.05, ***p < 0.001; total effect (c): the effect of sleep duration on exposure to bullying; indirect effect (ab): a represents the effect of sleep duration on depression; b represents the effect of depression on exposure to bullying after controlling for the effect of sleep duration; direct effect (c’): the direct effect of sleep duration on exposure to bullying.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

Similar articles

See all similar articles

References

    1. Andresen E. M., Malmgren J. A., Carter W. B., Patrick D. L. (1994). Screening for depression in well older adults: evaluation of a short form of the CES-D (Center for Epidemiologic Studies Depression Scale). Am. J. Prev. Med. 10, 77–84. doi: 10.1016/S0749-3797(18)30622-6, PMID: - DOI - PubMed
    1. Bhavsar V., Hatch S. L., Dean K., McManus S. (2020). Association of prior depressive symptoms and suicide attempts with subsequent victimization: analysis of population-based data from the adult psychiatric morbidity survey. Eur. Psychiatry 63:e51. doi: 10.1192/j.eurpsy.2020.50, PMID: - DOI - PMC - PubMed
    1. Chen S., Liang K., Chen S., Huang L., Chi X. (2023). Association between 24-hour movement guideline and physical, verbal, and relational forms of bullying among Chinese adolescents. Asia Pac. J. Public Health 35, 168–174. doi: 10.1177/10105395221148851, PMID: - DOI - PMC - PubMed
    1. Chen B., Wang X., Gao Y. (2022). Does friend support matter? The association between gender role attitudes and school bullying among male adolescents in China. Children 9:1139. doi: 10.3390/children9081139 - DOI - PMC - PubMed
    1. Chen T., Wu Z., Shen Z., Zhang J., Shen X., Li S. (2014). Sleep duration in Chinese adolescents: biological, environmental, and behavioral predictors. Sleep Med. 15, 1345–1353. doi: 10.1016/j.sleep.2014.05.018, PMID: - DOI - PubMed

LinkOut - more resources