Bidirectional longitudinal relationships between victimization, resilience and suicidal ideation of adolescents

Suicidal ideation has become a frequent problem for teenagers. In recent years, the increase in victimization is closely related to adolescents' suicidal ideation. At the same time, psychological resilience plays an important role in maintaining mental health in clinical practice, which has also attracted extensive attention from researchers. However, the relationship between victimization, resilience and suicidal ideation of adolescents and its mechanisms are unclear. This study aimed to explore the developmental relationship among adolescents' victimization, resilience and suicidal ideation. A total of 1214 Chinese high school students (Mage=15.46, SD = 0.71) completed the measures of victimization, resilience and suicidal ideation.They provided data in three waves (T1, T2 and T3, 6 months apart). The results showed that there are reciprocal effects between adolescents' victimization, suicidal ideation and resilience. Specifically, resilience can positively predict adolescents' suicidal ideation, while suicidal ideation can not significantly predict adolescents' resilience. The research results support the Developmental Contextualism, and also suggest that there may be a vicious circle between school victimization and adolescents' suicidal ideation. By cultivating teenagers' psychological resilience and playing its positive driving role, we can prevent adolescents' victimization and suicidal ideation problems.