RELATIONS BETWEEN BULLYING VICTIMIZATION, SOCIAL FUNCTIONING, DISABILITY IDENTITY, AND MENTAL HEALTH OUTCOMES FOR INDIVIDUALS WITH NON-APPARENT DISABILITIES

Abstract

Not only is bullying a major concern for children and adolescents, impacting 15-28% of students in the U.S. (National Center for Educational Statistics, 2019), but individuals with disabilities are at even greater risk of victimization, with rates estimated to be around 1.5x greater on average (Bear et al., 2015; Blake et al., 2012). Furthermore, in addition to bullying already being associated with numerous negative long-term physical and mental health outcomes, bias-based bullying targeting an individual’s identity, such as disability, has been found to be associated with even worse outcomes for targeted individuals (Mulvey et al., 2018). With bullying being a prevalent and serious concern for individuals with disabilities, it is important to identify risk and protective factors to inform prevention efforts, as well as intervention efforts to reduce the adverse outcomes. This study sought to examine, for individuals with non-apparent disabilities, whether experiences of disability-based bullying victimization are associated with reduced disability identity. In addition, this study examined the impact of disability-based bullying victimization on mental health outcomes (i.e., depression, generalized anxiety, and social anxiety), and whether disability identity may mediate this relation. Lastly, this study examined whether social functioning impairments are associated with disability-based bullying victimization. Data were collected from a diverse sample of 282 college students with nonapparent disabilities attending two universities in the Mid-Atlantic region of the United States. Participants were recruited through the dissemination of recruitment materials via university email listservs, which invited students that met inclusion criteria to complete a multi-measure online survey, with the opportunity to enter a gift card raffle upon completion. The data were analyzed using the Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS) version 31.0 (IBM Corp., 2025), with primary analyses including independent samples t-tests, multiple linear regression, and mediation analyses. Results of this study indicated that experiencing greater frequencies of disability-based bullying victimization predicted lower disability identity. Additionally, disability identity partially or fully mediated the relationship between disability-based bullying victimization and symptoms of depression, generalized anxiety, and social anxiety, respectively. Lastly, social functioning impairments were significantly, positively, associated with disability-based bullying victimization and participants with greater social functioning impairments reported greater experiences of victimization than those with fewer impairments. Overall, the results of this study confirmed the hypothesis that past experiences of disability-based bullying victimization are negatively related to current disability identity. This study also showed that disability-based bullying victimization is associated with worse mental health outcomes (depression, generalized anxiety, and social anxiety), and that disability identity may mediate this relationship for depression, generalized anxiety, and social anxiety, respectively. Lastly, results supported previous findings that social functioning impairments are positively associated with disability-based bullying victimization, with those with greater impairments reported greater experiences of victimization on average. Implications for practitioners and future work were presented.