Consequences of bullying on adolescents’ mental health in Germany : comparing face-to-face bullying and cyberbullying

The present study explored whether face-to-face bullying (physical as well as relational), cyberbullying, and teachers’ bullying have a negative impact on adolescent’s mental health and whether there are gender differences. Analyses are based on a representative cross-sectional standardised survey of 10,638 students of the nineth grade of one federal state of Germany. Findings show that psychological cyberbullying is most strongly associated with poor mental health for both boys and girls. Relational bullying by classmates as well as by teachers also show a significant correlation with poor mental health. For girls, there appears to be an additional relationship between sexual cyberbullying and mental health. Physical forms of bullying were not found to be associated with mental health. Implications for research are discussed