Emotional regulation and self-harm risk in adolescents

Introduction: The purpose of the current research is to know the status of self-harm behavior and its associations with different aspects of emotional dysregulation.

Materials and methods: A non-experimental, observational, descriptive and transversal research took place in three different high-schools of Río Cuarto city, Córdoba, Argentina, during the realization of an extension program conducted by Siglo 21 University. DERS scale was applied looking for information relative to emotional dysregulation and CRA scale to assess self-harm behavior.

Results: In total, 107 students were enquired, of which 43% manifested that they had harmed themselves at least once; in this group, 5,35% expressed that “frequently” or “always” did it with suicidal intention. Discussion: Results indicates that self-harm behavior is growing up between adolescent’s population, that the start age tends to be lower than current literature suggests and that subjects with bigger emotional dysregulation difficulties presents more frequency of thoughts and self-harm behavior. In this study, self-harm behavior and suicidal attempts tend to overlap.

Conclusion: The current research finds a high frequency of adolescents with self-harm behavior, confirming a growing up tendency and a strong influence of emotional elements at the moment of deciding whether self-harm or not, specially difficulties in impulse control.