Resilience mediates the association between school bullying victimization and self-harm in Chinese adolescents

•Chinese adolescents reported high prevalence of self-harm (SH) and bullying.•Resilience played a salient role in mediating school bullying victimization and self-harm association.•Emotion regulation was the strongest mediator among all 5 dimensions of resilience.•Building up resilience of adolescents may reduce school bullying victimization related SH behaviors. The association between school bullying and self-harm (SH) in adolescents has been extensively discussed. Nevertheless, little is known about the mechanism of this relationship, particularly the role of resilience. Our research aimed to explore and evaluate the potential moderation and mediation of resilience in the association between school bullying victimization and SH in a large sample of Chinese adolescents. We conducted a population-based cross-sectional survey of 3146 adolescents in southwest China. The data were collected by a self-administered questionnaire. Multivariate Logistic regression which incorporated the product term of bullying victimization and resilience was used to estimate the moderation of resilience. Mediation of resilience in bullying victimization and SH were evaluated by path model. The prevalence of bullying involvement and SH were 13.13% (95% CI:9.31%-18.00%) and 47.0% (95% CI: 36.3%-58.0%), respectively. School bullying victimization was positively associated with SH. Resilience was a prominent mediator which accounted for 27.7% of the total association. Among all five dimensions of resilience, emotion regulation (30.90%), interpersonal assistance (24.78%), and family support (22.16%) showed the strongest mediation. Nevertheless, the moderation of resilience in this association was not statistically significant. The findings of the present study suggest that resilience strengthening measures, particularly those aimed at improving emotion regulation ability and building social support could be effective in reducing school bullying victimization related SH behaviors among Chinese teenagers.