(PS9-C72) Anxious Bullies: Parent and Youth Anxiety and Distress Predict Bullying Perpetration

Early studies of bullying perpetration conceptualized the “anxious bully” as different from typical bullies due to their tendency to experience anxiety, depression, and problems at home. There are mixed findings regarding whether bullying perpetration and anxiety are associated, and studies on typologies of bullying are largely descriptive with non-clinical samples. A few studies have found that parent distress/psychopathology may contribute to youth bullying perpetration, but none have measured both parent distress and youth levels of anxiety. We asked N = 220 youths (58.6%) ages 6.77 – 18.03 years (M = 11.10; SD = 3.09 ) referred to an anxiety disorders clinic about their anxiety symptom severity using the Screen for Child Anxiety Related Emotional Disorders (SCARED) and frequency of bullying perpetration in the past month using the Illinois Bullying Scale (IBS). We also asked parents (usually mothers) of these youths about their own levels of distress using the Depression, Anxiety, and Stress Scale (DASS). All youths met for a primary anxiety disorder diagnosis. Fifty percent of youths endorsed at least one bullying perpetration act and 17% endorsed six or more. In hierarchical regression analyses, we found that youth anxiety symptom severity significantly and positively predicted bullying perpetration, but parent distress did not. We further found a significant interaction between youth anxiety severity and parent distress, such that frequency of bullying perpetration was higher when both youth anxiety and parent distress were high compared with when youth anxiety was high and parent distress was low.  Findings shine a light on this often overlooked group of youth who engage in bullying and provide insight into the complex interplay between youth distress and parent distress in predicting bullying perpetration among youth with anxiety disorders.