Developmental associations between bullying victimization and suicidal ideation and direct self-injurious behavior in adolescence and emerging adulthood

Background: Bullying, suicide, and self-injury are significant issues among young people. Extensive research has documented bullying victimization associations with suicidal ideation and self-injury; however, the modeling approaches used have mostly not addressed the relations between these constructs at the within-person level and it is these links that are critical for testing developmental theories and guiding intervention efforts. This examined the within-person, bidirectional relations between these constructs in adolescence and emerging adulthood. 
Methods: Participants were from the Zurich Project on Social Development from Childhood to Adulthood (z-proso). Random intercept cross-lagged panel models (RI-CLPMs) were fit to general and sexual bullying victimization and suicidal ideation data at ages 15, 17, and 20 (n=1465), and general and sexual victimization and direct self-injurious behavior data at ages 13, 15, 17, and 20 (n=1482). 
Results: There was a positive within-person effect of age 15 general bullying victimization on age 17 suicidal ideation (β=.10) and age 17 suicidal ideation on age 20 general bullying victimization (β=.14). 
Conclusions: General bullying victimization and suicidal ideation may have detrimental effects on each other over development but at different stages.