Personality characteristic of adolescent self-harmers
| Authors | |
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| Year of publication | 2015 |
| Type | Article in Proceedings |
| Conference | Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences |
| MU Faculty or unit | |
| Citation | |
| Field | Psychology |
| Keywords | personality characteristic; neuroticism; psychoticism; self-harm; adolescence; gender |
| Description | The study, a part of a large-scale project "Validation of tools for screening of self-harm in early adolescents", explored the associations between the occurrence of self-harm and adolescent personality. Out of the large sample of 1,026 respondents, 43.2% (n = 443) reported at least one experience with self-harm. The prevalence was somewhat larger in girls (n = 139, 31.4%) than boys (n = 102, 23.0%). The average age at the first experience with self-harm was 12.6 years. The questionnaire, administered in a single session, contained the Self-Harm Behavior Questionnaire (Gutierrez, 1998), the Self- Harm Inventory (Sansone, Sansone & Wiederman, 1995), and a Czech adaptation of Eysenck's personality inventory for children B-JEPI (Senka, 1994). The results suggested intriguing gender differences in the associations between self-harm and teenagers' personalities. Girls scored significantly higher on neuroticism than boys in all self-harm frequency groups. Conversely, boys showed higher levels of psychoticism, regardless of self-harm experience. Both neuroticism and psychoticism correlated positively with the occurrence self-harm, which means that children's personality may play an important role in transition from episodic to recurring self-harm. The interaction effects of either neuroticism or psychoticism and gender on self-harm were not significant, suggesting that the two traits are positively associated with self-harm behaviour in boys and girls more-or-less equally. Although the direction of causality cannot be inferred from the present data, levels of neuroticism and psychoticism can serve as important risk indicators and help target prevention and intervention strategies at young adolescents who are at the highest risk of developing self-harm. |
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