The Effect of Teacher Discrimination Behavior on Adolescent Suicidal Ideation: A Cross-Sectional Survey

Abstract

Introduction

 Suicidal ideation and suicidal behavior, as the most severe psychological and behavioral problems among adolescents, bring not only significant damage to individual social functioning but also cause enormous economic and social pressure, which will ultimately be detrimental to social development and social stability. This paper aimed to explore the potential relationship between teacher discrimination behavior, peer bullying victimization, anxiety disorders, and adolescent suicidal ideation based on the Vulnerability-Stress Model.

Methods

 From September to November 2022, our research team surveyed 21,017 junior high school students from 12 secondary schools in ten cities in China. Mplus 8.3 software was used to analyze the pathways of teacher discrimination behavior on adolescent suicidal ideation.

Results

 The results showed that teacher preference had a significant negative effect on suicidal ideation, and teacher prejudice significantly positively affected suicidal ideation. Mediation test results indicated that there were significant independent mediating effects of peer bullying victimization and anxiety disorders between teacher discrimination behavior and adolescents’ suicidal ideation, as well as significant chain mediating effects. 

Conclusion

 Secondary school teachers should improve their self-quality and pay more attention to adolescents’ suicidal ideation. Teachers are expected to put love into their education, respect and trust each student, and attend to their emotional needs unbiasedly. Educators should develop targeted prevention and intervention measures according to the actual situation of school bullying and also strengthen adolescents’ life-value education to improve the psychological quality of adolescents and create a healthy campus atmosphere.

Keywords:

• teacher discrimination behavior
• peer bullying victimization
• anxiety disorders
• suicidal ideation
• adolescents

Data Sharing Statement

The data sets used and/or analyzed during the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.

Ethics Approval and Consent to Participate

This study was approved by the Ethics Committee of Kangda College of Nanjing Medical University (2022-01) and all participants signed informed consent.

Acknowledgments

Mao-min Jiang, Ji-neng Chen, Xin-cheng Huang are co-first authors for this study. The authors thank all the participants, assistants, and researchers for their contribution to this study.

Disclosure

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant numbers 72274023), Social Science Project of the Ministry of Education of China (Grant Numbers 22YJA890037). The sponsors of the project had no role in the study design, data collection, data analysis, data interpretation, and writing the manuscript.