Proceedings of The International Conference on Research in Psychology
Year: 2019
DOI: https://www.doi.org/10.33422/icrpconf.2019.03.139
The Prevalence and Most Frequent Forms of Self-Harm in Adolescents
Slavka Demuthova, Andrej Demuth
ABSTRACT:
Self-harming behaviour is a relatively frequent form of high risk behaviour in adolescents and has undergone major changes during the last decades. These mainly include the prevalence,comorbidity and a wider range of the forms of self-harming behaviour. The main objective of this study is to provide some up-to-date preliminary findings related to the prevalence of self-harm in the population of 12 to 18-year-old adolescents in Slovakia. Using The Self-Harm Inventory, the authors have examined the prevalence of the individual forms of self-harm and analysed them with regard to age and sex. The results indicate a high prevalence of self-harm among adolescents (59.11%), with a higher prevalence in women, the absence of a correlation with age and the presence of cross-gender differences in the forms of self-harming behaviour. The conclusions indicate a need for a clearer definition of the term self-harm and in particular of the forms of behaviour which may be considered as a type of this high risk behaviour. In the context of the DSM-5 proposal for the diagnostics of Non-Suicidal Self-Injury, the study discusses the many diverse definitions of self-harm and especially the importance of studying the indirect psychological forms of self-harming behaviour.
Keywords: self-harm, prevalence, forms, adolescence.