Department of Education, University of York, York, UK.
Autism Res. 2023 Aug;16(8):1533-1549. doi: 10.1002/aur.2987. Epub 2023 Jul 17.
Sibling bullying is associated with poor mental health in autistic adolescents. The reasons for this remain unknown. In the current study, we attempted to replicate the existing findings on the direct associations between sibling bullying and mental health in autistic adolescents and expand knowledge by focusing on the indirect associations through self-esteem. We made use of existing data from the Millennium Cohort Study, a nationally representative UK-based birth cohort study. We fitted a mediation model to longitudinal data from a sample of 416 autistic adolescents aged 11, 14, and 17 years old who had at least one sibling. We found that sibling bullying was prevalent in the lives of autistic adolescents, especially in those who were late-diagnosed, had a shared bedroom, and lived in a low-income household. Additionally, increased sibling bullying in early adolescence was a significant predictor of reduced self-esteem in mid-adolescence; in turn, reduced self-esteem predicted poorer mental health and wellbeing in late adolescence. Our findings indicate that sibling bullying in early adolescence may indirectly lead to poorer mental health and wellbeing in late adolescence through a reduction in self-esteem in mid-adolescence in autistic adolescents. We discuss the implications of these findings further.
同胞欺凌与自闭症青少年的心理健康状况不佳有关。其原因尚不清楚。在目前的研究中，我们试图复制现有研究结果，即自闭症青少年同胞欺凌与心理健康之间存在直接关联，并通过关注自尊的间接关联来扩展知识。我们利用了英国全国代表性出生队列研究——千禧年队列研究中的现有数据。我们对至少有一个兄弟姐妹的 416 名 11、14 和 17 岁的自闭症青少年的纵向数据进行了中介模型拟合。我们发现，同胞欺凌在自闭症青少年的生活中很普遍，尤其是在那些被诊断较晚、共用卧室和生活在低收入家庭的青少年中。此外，青少年早期的同胞欺凌增加是青少年中期自尊降低的一个重要预测因素；反过来，自尊降低预示着青少年晚期心理健康和幸福感较差。我们的研究结果表明，在青少年早期的同胞欺凌可能会通过青少年中期自尊的降低，间接导致青少年晚期心理健康和幸福感较差。我们进一步讨论了这些发现的意义。
