Journal of the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry
New researchThe Economic Cost of Child and Adolescent Bullying in Australia
Section snippets
General Overview
In this study, bullying was defined as a repeated negative action from 1 or more individuals toward another where there is intention to harm and a power imbalance between the victim and the perpetrator(s).13,14 Both traditional and cyber forms of bullying were included. Following a cost-of-illness methodology, the current study adopted a prevalence-based approach with prevalence-based outcomes calculated by estimating the annual attributable costs associated with bullying in childhood and
Results
The RRs and PAFs used to estimate health system costs attributable to bullying victimization are shown in Table 1. Individuals experiencing bullying victimization in both childhood and adolescence were found to have almost twice the risk of intentional self-harm compared with individuals not involved in bullying victimization. Based on lifetime prevalence of bullying victimization, the calculated PAFs were as follows: 9.57% for anxiety disorders, 13.13% for depressive disorders, 15.34% for
Discussion
This is the first study to estimate the annual cost of bullying victimization using a prevalence-based approach. The total annual economic cost of health and nonhealth problems due to bullying victimization during childhood and adolescence in Australia was AUD $764 million in 2016. Based on included studies and reports, the major contributor to annual cost related to health care service utilization is treatment of depressive disorders, anxiety, intentional self-harm, and tobacco use. In
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The authors have reported no funding for this work.
This study was presented as a tabletop presentation at the International Association for Youth Mental Health 5th International Conference; October 26–28, 2019; Brisbane, Australia.
Author Contributions
Conceptualization: Jadambaa, Brain, Pacella, Thomas, McCarthy, Scott, Graves
Data curation: Jadambaa
Formal analysis: Jadambaa
Investigation: Jadambaa
Methodology: Jadambaa, Brain, Pacella, Thomas, McCarthy, Scott, Graves
Software: Jadambaa
Supervision: Brain, Graves
Visualization: Jadambaa
Writing – original draft: Jadambaa
Writing – review and editing: Jadambaa, Brain, Pacella, Thomas, McCarthy, Scott, Graves
ORCID
Amarzaya Jadambaa, MD, MPH: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0862-1154
David Brain, PhD: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6612-348X
Rosana Pacella, PhD: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9742-1957
Hannah J. Thomas, PhD: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7897-7821
Molly McCarthy, PhD: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4702-5523
James G. Scott, MBBS, PhD: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0744-0688
Nicholas Graves, PhD: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5559-3267
Nicole White, PhD, of the Queensland University of Technology, served as the statistical expert for this research.
Disclosure: Dr. Jadambaa has received research funding for her PhD project from the Queensland University of Technology Postgraduate Research Award. Dr. Thomas is affiliated with the Queensland Centre for Mental Health Research, which receives its core funding from the Queensland Department of Health. Dr. Scott has received support from the National Health and Medical Research Council Practitioner Fellowship (grant number 1105807). The funders had no role in the design of the study and data collection, analysis and interpretation of results, writing the manuscript, or submitting for publication. Drs. Brain, Pacella, McCarthy, and Graves have reported no biomedical financial interests or potential conflicts of interest.