Students' health: an integrative review on family and bullying

Bullying is a public health problem and this integrative review's aim was to assess the relationship between family context and the occurrence of such a phenomenon. Its original contribution is to broadly address this type of violence. The SPIDER strategy was used to develop the study, which was guided by the question: what is the role of the family in the development, perpetuation and prevention of bullying? The following databases were searched: PsycInfo and Lilacs, and the SciELO Virtual Library using the descriptors 1. bullying and family; 2. bullying and parents, and their correlates in Portuguese and Spanish. The studies' methodological quality was assessed according to level of evidence. A total of 27 papers published between 2009 and 2013 and written either in English, Spanish or Portuguese were included; the evidence found in the papers mostly ranged from strong to moderate. The analysis revealed most studies had a cross-sectional design and did not report the theoretical framework used. Aspects of the family context, sociodemographic characteristics and domestic violence, were associated with the involvement of students with bullying. Bullying requires intersectorial interventions and further studies are recommended to focus not only on individual characteristics of students but also on their contexts.