More Teens Engaging in Self-Injury

Research published in the August 2007 issue of Psychological Medicine indicates that Non-Suicidal Self-Injury (NSSI), the deliberate, direct destruction of body tissue without conscious suicidal intent, has increased among high school students.

Led by researchers at The Miriam Hospital and The Warren Alpert Medical School of Brown University, the team found that nearly half of the teens studied endorsed some form of NSSI in the past, a far greater percent than reported by previous studies on self-harm. Twenty-eight percent of the entire sample further admitted to engaging in moderate to severe forms of NSSI including cutting skin, burning skin, giving self a tattoo, scraping skin or using a pencil to "erase" skin.

"The findings are important because it suggests that NSSI is more prevalent among adolescents in the general population than previously thought," says lead author Elizabeth Lloyd-Richardson, Ph.D., a psychologist at The Miriam Hospital and assistant professor of psychiatry and human behavior at The Warren Alpert Medical School of Brown University.

The study also indicated that the most common reasons teens in the study engaged in NSSI included "to get control of a situation," "to stop bad feelings," and "to try and get a reaction from someone."

Lloyd-Richardson and her team note it is important to distinguish between minor and moderate/severe forms of self-injury, since severe forms of NSSI may be predictive of more serious outcomes. To help distinguish between the two, minor forms of NSSI consisted of behaviors such as pulling out hair, biting self, or picking at areas of the body to the point of drawing blood. Moderate/severe self-injurers were more likely than minor self-injurers to report a history of psychiatric treatment and hospitalizations, suicide attempt, and current suicide ideation.

ABSTRACT: Characteristics and functions of non-suicidal self-injury in a community sample of adolescents