Longitudinal Relationships between Bullying Victimization and Depressive Symptoms and the Mediating Role of Interpersonal Trust in Middle Adolescents

Although previous studies have demonstrated bidirectional within-person associations between peer victimization and depressive symptoms in adolescence, the strength and pattern of these associations may differ across distinct forms of victimization. Moreover, the psychological mechanisms mediating these links and any gender-specific differences remain to be fully understood. This study employed a Random Intercept Cross-Lagged Panel Model to explore the within-person bidirectional associations among physical victimization, relational victimization, interpersonal trust, and depressive symptoms. A total of 1227 Chinese middle adolescents (56.6% girls; M_age = 16.00 years, SD = 0.61) participated in this three-wave longitudinal design with six-month intervals. The results revealed that interpersonal trust significantly mediated the bidirectional within-person associations between relational victimization and depressive symptoms, but not between physical victimization and depressive symptoms. Conversely, depressive symptoms predicted both types of victimization indirectly through lower interpersonal trust. Moreover, the within-person effect of physical victimization on interpersonal trust and that of interpersonal trust on depressive symptoms were significant only for boys, while the effect of interpersonal trust on physical victimization was significant only for girls. These findings highlight the crucial role of interpersonal trust in the bidirectional relations between peer victimization and depressive symptoms and suggest that intervention efforts targeting trust development may help to break this cycle during adolescence.