Moderating role of mental health literacy on the relationship between bullying victimization during the life course and symptoms of anxiety and depression in Chinese college students

BACKGROUND: Exposure to persistent bullying victimization across multiple periods results in a high risk of worse consequences. Although amples studies support the association between bullying victimization and symptoms of anxiety and depression, whether mental health literacy can serve as a moderator on this relationship remains unknown. Therefore, the aim of this study was to examine the patterns of bullying victimization across the life course, and disentangle the moderating effect of mental health literacy between bullying victimization patterns and symptoms of anxiety and depression in Chinese college students. METHODS: A total of 4036 college students were enrolled by cluster sampling from November 2020 to January 2021. Bullying victimization, mental health literacy, and symptoms of anxiety and depression were measured by self-report validated questionnaires. A latent class analysis was applied to identify bullying patterns. The PROCESS program was conducted to analyze whether mental health literacy moderates the link between bullying victimization patterns and symptoms of anxiety and depression. RESULTS: Three latent patterns of bullying victimization were identified as follows: persistent bullying pattern (6.2%), moderate bullying pattern (10.5%), and low bullying pattern (83.3%). Logisitic regression analysis of anxiety and depressive symptoms indicated that compared with low bullying pattern, persistent bullying pattern had the highest risk. Specifically, mental health literacy moderated the association between bullying victimization pattern and anxiety symptoms (B = -0.039, P < 0.05). CONCLUSIONS: It is important for practitioners to examine bullying victimization across the life course concurrently rather than a single period in isolation. Interventions and research should enhance mental health literacy to improve the mental health in college students with a history of bullying victimization. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s12889-023-16326-y.