(PS10-17) Me Sentía Como Un Bicho Raro: Costa Rican College Students' Personal Narratives of past Bullying Victimization

Bullying among youth is a global problem with significant implications for the well-being and mental health of both victims and perpetrators. By definition, bullying is interpersonal and as such, cultural factors play a crucial role in shaping its incidence, expression, and experience (Romo & Kelvin, 2016). Research on bullying in Latin America is limited (Borja Villanueva et al., 2020) and further complicated by the many different ways it is conceptualized in the literature (e.g., “acoso” (harassment) and “intimidación” (intimidation); López et al., 2012; Ruiz Lázaro et al., 2022). The present study explores the culturally distinct experiences of Costa Rican young adults who experienced bullying victimization in childhood. In this study, 13 college students from an urban Costa Rican university completed a semi-structured interview where they were asked to share a past experience with bullying victimization. Interviews were conducted in Spanish by the first author, a native speaker of the language, via Zoom. Using reflexive thematic analysis (Braun and Clarke, 2022), we identified themes and subthemes from the participants’ narratives. Some major themes were: sense of isolation, hopelessness, and outsider status. The stories these themes tell, and their cultural and intervention implications, will be discussed in relation to existing theories of bullying victimization and the implementation of bullying intervention programs.