The objective of this study was to evaluate bullying at school and identify the factors associated with it among a sample of Lebanese school adolescents. A cross-sectional study was carried out between April 2014 and June 2014, using a convenient sampling of Lebanese students in private schools from Beirut and Mount Lebanon. The results showed that 712 (18.1%) adolescents had been bullied in the past 2 months (95% CI [0.169, 0.192]). A backward logistic regression, taking \"being bullied in the last 2 months\" as a dependent variable, showed significantly lower odds of being bullied in the last 2 months in those who find it easy (adjusted odds ratios [aOR] = 0.434) and very easy (aOR = 0.391) to talk to their father, and having some close male or female friends compared with none. Furthermore, significantly higher odds of being bullied were found among males compared with females (aOR = 0.664), having a best friend who smokes sometimes compared with never (aOR = 1.389), and a father who drinks everyday compared with never (aOR = 1.621). This study was able to shed light on a problem that sometimes goes silent in schools and has a negative impact on the mental health of teenagers. Indeed, the results of our study showed that peer victimization was closely linked to clinically relevant mental health issues. In addition, factors such as parental and peer support could protect against the negative effects of bullying.

Behavioral genetics studies and new empirical evidence suggest that depression cannot simply be explained by the influence of single genes but that gene-gene-environment interactions are important to better understanding the etiology of depression. The present study investigated the main and interactive effects of COMT gene Val158Met polymorphism, DAT1 gene rs27072 polymorphism, and peer relationships (i.e., peer acceptance and rejection) on adolescent depressive symptoms. In a sample of 1045 Chinese Han adolescents (Mage = 12.34 ± 0.47 years, 50.1% girls), saliva samples, self-reported depressive symptoms and within-classroom peer nominations were collected. After controlling for gender, age, and SES, the three-way interaction of COMT, DAT1, and peer acceptance significantly concurrently predicted adolescent depressive symptoms. Adolescents with ValVal genotype of COMT and CC genotype of DAT1 were more sensitive to acceptance, compared to their counterparts carrying other combined genotypes. However, a similar three-way interaction was not significant in the case of peer rejection. Additionally, the split-half validation generally replicated these findings. More importantly, this study underscores complex polygenic underpinnings of depression and lends support for the gene-gene-environment interactions implicated in the etiology of depressive symptoms.

A number of studies have explored how rejection sensitivity (RS) affects the neural and physiological responses to stimuli with implicit rejection clues. Peer rejection during social interaction conveys explicit rejection feedback. The current event-related potentials (ERP) study using Chatroom task aimed to test to what extent RS modulated individuals\' psychological and neural response to explicit rejection feedback. The subjective ratings mainly demonstrated that RS modulated ostracism distress and negative mood following rejection feedback. The ERP results showed that compared with low RS individuals, both the parietal P3 and left frontal LPP responses towards rejection feedback were enhanced in high RS individuals, indicating that high RS individuals exhibit attentional bias, intense anger experience and lower emotion regulation towards rejection suggested by their neural responses. The current study provides a new insight into neural correlates of RS in the high ecological experimental context.

A pilot study of sex differences in biological response to peer rejection and performance challenges across development was conducted. Participants were 59 typically-developing children (ages 8-17; 58% girls); 59 children completed one challenge: 37 completed both challenges. Following a habituation session, participants completed peer rejection (exclusion challenges) and/or performance (speech, arithmetic, tracing) stress sessions. Saliva cortisol and alpha amylase (AA) were measured throughout. Post-pubertal girls showed increased AA and equivalent cortisol output in response to rejection vs. performance; pre-pubertal girls showed heightened cortisol and AA response to performance vs. rejection. Boys showed similar biological responses across puberty, with pre- and post-pubertal boys demonstrating heightened cortisol, but equivalent AA output in response to performance vs. rejection stressors. Although results are preliminary, they suggest increases in relative sensitivity to rejection vs. performance stressors and malleability of stress response across development in girls, but stability of stress response across development in boys. Future, larger-scale, longitudinal studies are needed.

This study was performed to investigate differences between children who did and did not experience peer rejection in psychological state through surveys and in emotion processing during an interpersonal stress challenge task to reflect naturalistic interpersonal face-to-face relationships. A total of 20 right-handed children, 10 to 12 yr of age, completed self-rating questionnaires inquiring about peer rejection in school, depression, and anxiety. They then underwent an interpersonal stress challenge task simulating conditions of emotional stress, in reaction to positive, negative and neutral facial expression stimuli, using interpersonal feedbacks, and functional magnetic resonance imaging (FMRI) for an analysis of neural correlates during the task. Ten were the peer-rejection group, whereas the remainder were the control group. Based on the behavioral results, the peer-rejection group exhibited elevated levels of depression, state anxiety, trait anxiety and social anxiety as compared to the control group. The FMRI results revealed that the peer-rejection group exhibited greater and remarkably more extensive activation of brain regions encompassing the amygdala, orbitofrontal cortex and ventrolateral prefrontal cortex in response to negative feedback stimuli of emotional faces. The different brain reactivities characterizing emotion processing during interpersonal relationships may be present between children who do and do not experience peer rejection.

Although research demonstrates sluggish cognitive tempo (SCT) symptoms to be statistically distinct from other child psychopathologies (including attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder [ADHD], anxiety, depression, and oppositionality) and associated with social impairment, all studies conducted to date have been cross-sectional. Thus, while extant research demonstrates an association between SCT and social functioning, it is entirely unknown whether or not SCT longitudinally predicts increases in social impairment. This study provides an initial examination of the prospective association between SCT symptoms and children׳s peer functioning. Teachers of 176 children in 1st-6th grades (ages 6-13; 47% boys) provided ratings of children׳s psychopathology (i.e., SCT, ADHD, anxious/depressive, and oppositional/conduct problems) and peer functioning (i.e., popularity, negative social preference, peer impairment), and peer functioning was assessed again 6 months later. Multilevel modeling analyses indicated that, above and beyond child demographics, other psychopathologies, and baseline peer functioning, SCT symptoms were significantly associated with poorer peer functioning at the 6-month follow-up. In addition, 75% of children with high levels of SCT were rated as functionally impaired in the peer domain, in contrast to only 8% of children with low SCT. Further research is needed with larger samples to examine SCT over a longer developmental period and with other domains of adjustment.