Sexual minority, American Indian, Alaskan Native, non-Hispanic Multiracial, and female adolescents are at highest risk for suicide attempts from bullying victimization, according to a new study by researchers at Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health. The magnitude of these disparities was consistent over time from 2015 to 2019, except for increased bullying toward gay and lesbian adolescents when nearly half of gay and lesbian students faced bullying in 2019. The findings are published in the Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry (JAACAP).

Examining 44,066 adolescents from the Youth Risk Behavior Survey (YRBS), the research addressed bullying victimization reflecting any experience of in-person bullying or cyberbullying and suicide attempts in the past year. The data of approximately 15,000 U.S. adolescents who were attending school grades 9 to 12 were collected biennially through nationally representative surveys across sex, race/ethnicity, and sexual identity.

Bullying disparities were particularly severe across sex and sexual identity. Female adolescents had nearly double the odds of being bullied compared to male adolescents. Adolescents who reported their sexual identity as bisexual, gay, lesbian, or “not sure” had similarly increased odds of being bullied compared to heterosexual peers. These disparities carried over to being bullied offline only, online-only, or both. American Indian/Alaskan Native and non-Hispanic Multiracial were the racial/ethnic groups with the highest rates of being bullied.



Patterns mirror the disparities in suicide attempts, which were most common for female, American Indian/Alaskan Native, non-Hispanic Multiracial, and sexual minority adolescents. These patterns also apply to suicidal ideation, plans, and injury.



“Our results reflect the ongoing marginalization of vulnerable young people,” says first author Noah T. Kreski, MPH, in the Department of Epidemiology at Columbia Mailman School. “Whether it’s due to sexism, racism, or homophobia, bullying persists as a mechanism by which groups are targeted and harmed.”



Disparities in bullying and suicide attempts were checked for shifts over time, with the only significant change being increasing bullying victimization for gay/lesbian adolescents. Bullying victimization among gay and lesbian adolescents went from 32 percent to 45 percent between 2015 and 2019. Further efforts should be made to support this group, as well as bisexual adolescents who had the highest overall rate of being bullied (42 percent) and having a past year suicide attempt (26.5 percent), according to Kreski.



“Schools, and other spaces for adolescents, need a strong, systematic approach to anti-bullying that directly addresses forms of bias. These spaces also need systems equipped to support the mental health of adolescents when problems arise,” noted Kreski. “Holding bullies accountable for their actions, covering social justice curricula, and ensuring that adolescents feel empowered to come forth when facing bullying or suicidality are just a few steps to actively support young people as they face these difficult experiences.”



Co-authors are Qixuan Chen, Mark Olfson, Silvia S. Martins, Pia M. Mauro, Deborah S. Hasin, and Katherine M. Keyes, Columbia Mailman School of Public Health; and Magdalena Cerda, NYU Grossman School of Medicine.



The study was supported by the National Institute on Drug Abuse (grant DA048853) and the National Center for Injury Prevention and Control through the Columbia Center for Injury Science and Prevention (grant R49-CE003094). 

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When middle school student Diego Stolz, 13, died from the injuries sustained in an on-campus attack by two classmates whom he had reported were bullying him the week before, community members said the only way to prevent such tragedies was to teach their children to fight in order to be able to savagely beat the bullies before they themselves were beaten.

But California school districts vary wildly in the rates of bullying faced by students, as anonymously reported by the students themselves.

According to the California Healthy Kids Survey, which is conducted in about 70% of California’s 1,037 public school districts, about a quarter of seventh graders in Irvine Unified in Orange County have experienced harassment or bullying and about 10% of them have been in a physical fight. In Alameda Unified in the Bay Area, 43% of seventh graders say they’ve been harassed or bullied and 18% of them have been in a physical fight. The disparities between districts don’t neatly line up with socioeconomic status or any other simple explanation. Something else is going on.

I first became aware of the treasure trove of data in the California Healthy Kids Survey in 2018, after four high school and middle school students in Rancho Cucamonga killed themselves in the first few weeks of the 2018-19 school year. In the process of trying to cover the awful news in a sensitive, responsible way, I encountered the work of Prof. Ron Avi Astor, now at UCLA. Astor and a co-author had looked at the disparities reported in the California Healthy Kids Survey in how many secondary students had reported considering killing themselves in the past year. Astor was — and I believe still is — frustrated at how little was being done with the data, which suggested all sorts of factors impacted how likely kids were to consider suicide.

So, in 2019, I did something about it. Using the most recent California Healthy Kids Survey data, I looked at the self-reported levels of suicidal thoughts among students in the Los Angeles region, discovering sometimes dramatic differences between districts, ranging from a low of 13% in Coachella Valley Unified to a high of 32% in Rowland Unified.

The disparities didn’t nicely track economic fault lines: In Rim of the World Unified, where schools are crumbling as enrollment plummets, only 14% of students said they had considered killing themselves. But in affluent Palos Verde Peninsula Unified, students were 9% more likely to think about suicide.

I wanted to write a story that went beyond a blame-and-shame article, which did not seem likely to prevent any student suicides. Instead, I interviewed officials at districts where students reported low levels of suicidal thoughts, as well as districts that had seen dramatic drops over the past five years. I found common elements in all of them, a set of mental and emotional health supports, sometimes offered for free by outside nonprofits to impoverished districts. The resulting story was passed back and forth between educators on social media and our internal metrics show that the entire package of stories continue to be read, two years later.

Now I want to do the same with bullying, looking at California school districts where students report low levels of bullying and fighting and see what programs they have in common. I want to create a package of stories under the auspices of the 2021 Data Fellowship that educators, parents and students can turn to, find programs that have a proven track record of working and replicate them across the state and nation.

Because I don’t think bullying is inevitable and I don’t believe that adults should just accept that more kids like Rosalie and Diego will die because of it.

Beau Yarbrough | Contributed

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“We need to find ways to pressure and raise the pressure, frankly, on Beijing to abide by the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, and to challenge its bullying and excessive maritime claims,” she said, in remarks at the opening of a bilateral meeting with Vietnamese President Nguyen Xuan Phuc.

Her comments follow sharp words towards Beijing during a speech in Singapore Tuesday, where she said their actions in the South China Sea amount to “coercion” and “intimidation.” On Wednesday in Vietnam, Harris also said that the U.S. supports sending the country an additional U.S. Coast Guard cutter, to help defend its security interests in the South China Sea. And she embraced elevating the relationship with Vietnam from a comprehensive partnership to a strategic partnership, a diplomatic designation that would reflect the deepening relationship between the two former foes.

They’re the latest moves by the Biden administration to strengthen its alliances in the Indo-Pacific region in an effort to counter China’s influence. Harris’ trip there, which included a stop in Singapore earlier this week, is aimed at broadening U.S. engagement with both nations and affirming the U.S. commitment to the region. Harris, who is the first U.S. vice president to visit Vietnam, told the nation’s president that “our relationship has come a long way in a quarter of a century.”

She also announced the launch of a new Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Southeast Asia regional office. The new CDC office will be one of four regional offices globally, and it’s focused on collaborating with regional governments on research and training to deal with and prevent global health crises.

The announcement comes as Vietnam is grappling with record high coronavirus infections in Vietnam driven by the delta variant and stubbornly low vaccination rates in the country. The surge in cases prompted a recent lockdown in Ho Chi Minh City, the nation’s business hub and the epicenter of the latest outbreak.

Harris is expected to offer further U.S. support to help the nation expand its vaccination rate, which hovers around 2%. She’ll also emphasize the opportunity for greater collaboration to address climate change and economic aid to the country.

zasaIn the afternoon, Harris will join a health security event with the health ministers from the Association of Southeast Asian Nations group and Papua New Guinea, where she’ll speak more about the launch of the CDC center.

But even as Harris hopes to keep her focus squarely on those key agenda items in Vietnam, her visit will be shadowed by a recent security scare in Vietnam and the ongoing developments in the U.S. exit from Afghanistan.

Harris’ flight to Vietnam was delayed for hours Tuesday afternoon after the vice president’s office was made aware of an investigation into two possible cases of the so-called Havana Syndrome in Hanoi, according to administration officials. The Havana Syndrome is the name for a rash of mysterious health incidents first reported by American diplomats and other government employees in the Cuban capital beginning in 2016. Harris has yet to comment publicly on the developments, but they’ll weigh heavily on officials while she participates in a lease signing for the U.S. Embassy in Hanoi, with embassy staff attending. And her swing through Vietnam is certain to draw some unwanted comparisons between the humiliating withdrawal of U.S. troops in 1975 and the tumultuous effort this week to evacuate Americans and allies from Afghanistan.

U.S. Sen. Bill Hagerty, a Tennessee Republican and a former U.S. ambassador to Japan, noted that those images are unavoidable for many Americans as Harris stops in the country.

“She’s going to have a challenge from a domestic public relations standpoint, because everyone in America right now is associating the images that they’re seeing on TV with the collapse of Kabul, with the images of Americans being lifted from the rooftop of our embassy in Saigon,” he said.

Hagerty also said that Harris will need to reassure the Vietnamese that America remains a “beacon of liberty and freedom in the world” and a “strong partner” in the region.

But Gregory Poling, a senior fellow for Asia at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, suggested that Vietnam could offer the vice president an opportunity to offer a more optimistic vision for what a relationship with a former foe can become.

“Simply by being there and engaging in this process, it shows the remarkable progress in rapprochement between the U.S. and Vietnam,” Poling said. “It’s possibly marginally good for them to show that — who in 1975 would believe that this is where the U.S. economic relationship would be?”

AP NEWS | Contributed

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The family of Diego Stolz, a middle school student who died after being assaulted by two classmates, has sued the Moreno Valley Unified School District, alleging it failed to take their previous report of bullying seriously and is responsible for his death.

On Sept. 16, 2019, Stolz, 13, was sucker-punched at Landmark Middle School in an incident captured on video and shared on social media. His head hit a pillar and, after he fell to the ground, unconscious, his assailant and another boy continued punching him. Stolz died days later in a hospital, having never awakened. His two assailants have been charged with assault and voluntary manslaughter.

Stolz died Sept. 24, 2019, and the family announced a few weeks later its intention to pursue legal action against the district. But the lawsuit was not filed until Friday, Sept. 11, 2020, because the family did not have legal standing to do so until state law changed

Assembly Bill 2445, introduced by Assemblywoman Eloise Gómez Reyes, D-San Bernardino, was signed by Gov. Gavin Newsom on Wednesday, Sept. 9. Previously, only parents were allowed to sue on behalf of someone who died “due to the wrongful act or neglect of another.” But since he was 1 year old, Stolz and his two brothers have been raised by his maternal aunt and uncle, Juana and Felipe Salcedo, after his mother died in 2007. After his father’s death in 2014, the pair were appointed his legal guardians.

“A legal guardian’s love and caring for a child, and the grief they feel from that child’s death is no different than that experienced by biological parents and the law should reflect that,” Reyes wrote in an email Monday, Sept. 14.

The lawsuit, filed by Manhattan Beach attorney David Ring, blasts Moreno Valley Unified, former Landmark Middle School administrators and the two boys who assaulted Stolz.

“The real tragedy behind Diego’s death is that administrators at Landmark Middle School had been warned multiple times that Diego was being bullied by other students at Landmark Middle School, including as recently as the Friday before the assault,” the lawsuit reads, in part. “Administrators completely disregarded such warnings and did absolutely nothing to stop the bullying, despite assuring Diego’s aunt (Juana) and other family members that measures would be taken to address the bullying.”

The district “blatantly” ignored “red flags that could have saved Diego’s life,” the lawsuit continues.

“We fully respect and appreciate the plaintiff’s right to bring this lawsuit,” Moreno Valley Unified spokeswoman Anahi Velasco said in a written statement. “Diego will never be forgotten, and we know that this is a very difficult time for the family.”

In addition to the district and the two boys who assaulted Stolz, the lawsuit also names Kamilah O’Connor, the former assistant principal at Landmark Middle School, whom the boy and his cousin Jazmin Salcedo reported an assault to, three days before the assault that took his life. The lawsuit also names former Assistant Principal Pedro Gutierrez and former Principal Scott Walker. None of the three now work at the school.

The lawsuit accuses Moreno Valley school administrators of allowing bullying to go “unchecked” at district campuses for decades, citing the 1998 death of Jerod Schroeder, also at Landmark Middle School.

“Fights and bullying at MVUSD campuses are a weekly occurrence,” the lawsuit reads, in part.

Velasco pointed to steps Moreno Valley has taken since Stolz’s death to prevent bullying and violence. They include an intervention team that ensures complaints are handled in a timely fashion and guarantees communication with the family of students who report being bullied and easier ways for students to report bullying, including prominent links on the desktop of every student’s Chromebook and on school websites. The district has also stepped up training for assistant principals, who handle student discipline issues, and encouraged them to ask for help when needed.

“The safety and wellness of our students and staff continue to remain a top priority for the district,” she concluded.

By BEAU YARBOUGH | Southern California News Group

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