Factors associated with verbal bullying in adolescents in the Amazon, according to the PeNSE, Brazil, 2015.

Abstract

School violence can affect all people present in the institution environment and generate fear in students who suffer aggression. Verbal bullying has an impact on who experiences it and can be one of the doors to reach physical violence. The sample consisted of 23,977 adolescents from seven Amazônia states in Brazil. Multinomial regression was performed to verify the association of variables with categories of verbal bullying. The level of statistical significance of 5% was adopted. The prevalence among adolescents in the Amazon in Brazil who were victims of verbal bullying at school was 4.3% (95%CI 3.86-4.72); among those who practiced bullying, denominated as perpetrators, 15.9% (95%CI 15.02-16.87); and among those who were victims and perpetrators of bullying, 2.0% (95%CI 1.70-2.23). The school context of adolescents in the Brazilian Amazon continues to be a space for the reproduction of violence and that the school is not solely responsible for the production of violence, because it is a complex, dynamic, multifaceted and multicausal phenomenon, with roots also in macrosocial, economic and sociocultural issues.