142nd APHA Annual Meeting and Exposition

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Experience of school victimization and depressive symptoms among mixed-race adolescents in South Korea: The different role of victims' help-seeking behaviors by gender

142nd APHA Annual Meeting and Exposition (November 15 - November 19, 2014): http://www.apha.org/events-and-meetings/annual
Sunday, November 16, 2014

Ji-Hwan Kim , Department of Public Health Sciences, Korea University, Seoul, South Korea
Ja Young Kim, MS , BK21PLUS Program in Embodiment: Health-Society Interaction, Department of Public Health Sciences, Graduate School of Korea University, Seoul, South Korea
Seung-Sup Kim, MD, MPH, ScD , Department of Healthcare Management, Korea University College of Health Sciences, Seoul, South Korea
Backgrounds: In South Korea, the number of mixed-race adolescents has rapidly increased since early 1990s, mainly due to international marriage. To date, no research has been conducted to examine the association between experience of school victimization and mental health outcomes among mixed-race adolescents in Korea.

Methods: Data from 2012 National Survey of Multicultural Families was analyzed to examine the association between experience of school victimization and depressive symptoms among 3,710 mixed-race adolescents. Among the victims, experience of school victimization was classified into three groups based on help-seeking behaviors: (1) ‘Seeking help’, meaning the victim sought help from others (e.g. teacher, parent), (2) ‘Feeling nothing’, meaning the victims felt nothing uncomfortable and did not seek help from others, and (3) ‘Not seeking’, meaning the victims did not seek help from others. Logistic regression was applied to examine the association for male and female separately.

Results: Among male mixed-race adolescents, school victimization was significantly associated with depressive symptoms among ‘Not seeking help’ group (OR: 4.66, 95% CI: 2.18, 9.82) and ‘Seeking help’ group (OR: 3.49, 95% CI: 2.28, 5.34) after adjusting for potential confounders including nationality of parents and Korean language fluency. Similar associations were observed among female ‘Not seeking help’ group (OR: 4.39, 95% CI: 1.62, 11.91), ‘Seeking help’ group (OR: 5.51, 95% CI: 3.42, 8.86). Among ‘Feeling nothing’ group, the association was significant for male (OR: 7.73, 95% CI: 2.73, 21.89) whereas no association was observed for female (OR: 0.97, 95% CI: 0.26, 3.65).

Conclusions: This study suggests that experience of school victimization is associated with depressive symptoms and that the role of victims’ help-seeking behaviors in the association may differ by gender among mixed-race adolescent in South Korea.

Learning Areas:

Epidemiology
Social and behavioral sciences

Learning Objectives:
Assess the risk of depressive symptoms among mixed-race adolescents who experienced school victimization in South Korea. Evaluate the role of victims’ help-seeking behaviors in the association between school victimization and depressive symptoms for male and female separately.

Keyword(s): Child/Adolescent Mental Health, Youth Violence

Presenting author's disclosure statement:

Qualified on the content I am responsible for because: I am a current Korea University MPH Student in epidemiology. I've focused on adolescent health.
Any relevant financial relationships? No

I agree to comply with the American Public Health Association Conflict of Interest and Commercial Support Guidelines, and to disclose to the participants any off-label or experimental uses of a commercial product or service discussed in my presentation.

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