Major depressive disorders, anxiety disorders, and eating disorders are common among adolescent girls who engage in self-cutting.
Major depressive disorders, anxiety disorders, and eating disorders are common among adolescent girls who engage in self-cutting.
Self-injury is an act of deliberately harming your own body, such as cutting or burning yourself. It is an unhealthy effort to cope with overwhelming negative emotions, such as intense anger, tension and frustration. Deliberate self-harm has become more prevalent in recent years among adolescents.
To investigate the prevalence of mental disorders and associated factors among self-cutting community-dwelling adolescents, researchers from Finland identified 80 adolescents who reported self-cutting. Of these 80 individuals, 44 consented to further detailed assessment. An age- and gender-matched control was selected for each participant.
Overall, 79 percent of the 41 self-cutting females had mental disorders, compared with 21 percent of controls. At least two psychiatric diagnoses were observed in 42 percent of female self-cutters and in 7 percent of controls. None of the three self-cutting males or their controls had a mental disorder.
It was found that major depressive disorder (63 percent versus 5 percent), anxiety disorders (37 percent versus 12 percent) and eating disorders (15 percent versus 0 percent) were much more common in a non-clinical sample of self-cutting girls than among controls.
The presence of major depressive disorder, signs of alcohol misuse, and internalising behavior strongly associated with self-cutting in community-living girls.
The researchers recommended that whenever self-cutting is identified, it should lead to psychiatric assessment with precise diagnosis and active treatment, if needed.
Self-injury is an act of deliberately harming your own body, such as cutting or burning yourself. It is an unhealthy effort to cope with overwhelming negative emotions, such as intense anger, tension and frustration. Deliberate self-harm has become more prevalent in recent years among adolescents.
To investigate the prevalence of mental disorders and associated factors among self-cutting community-dwelling adolescents, researchers from Finland identified 80 adolescents who reported self-cutting. Of these 80 individuals, 44 consented to further detailed assessment. An age- and gender-matched control was selected for each participant.
Overall, 79 percent of the 41 self-cutting females had mental disorders, compared with 21 percent of controls. At least two psychiatric diagnoses were observed in 42 percent of female self-cutters and in 7 percent of controls. None of the three self-cutting males or their controls had a mental disorder.
It was found that major depressive disorder (63 percent versus 5 percent), anxiety disorders (37 percent versus 12 percent) and eating disorders (15 percent versus 0 percent) were much more common in a non-clinical sample of self-cutting girls than among controls.
The presence of major depressive disorder, signs of alcohol misuse, and internalising behavior strongly associated with self-cutting in community-living girls.
The researchers recommended that whenever self-cutting is identified, it should lead to psychiatric assessment with precise diagnosis and active treatment, if needed.
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