Self-Harm: A Problem Plaguing Today's Adolescent Culture

Self-harm, whether suicidal or not, is a problem plaguing today's adolescent culture. There are theories and stereotypes that try to explain what groups are most drawn to it, but until now any real research on “who” or “why” has been absent. An article titled “Why alternative teenagers self-harm: exploring the link between non-suicidal self-injury, attempted suicide, and adolescent identity” was published by the BMC Psychiatry journal in an attempt to statistically prove which groups of adolescents were at risk of self harm, and the driving force behind it. The article was written by Robert Young, Nina Sproeber, Rebecca C Groschwitz, Marthe Priess, and Paul L Plener, and focuses on self harm in one specific adolescent group, the “alternatives”.

The students were all in the ninth-grade, and of varying socioeconomic statuses. They could only participate if written permission was obtained by both the student and the parent, and help was made available to the students in several different forms. It should be noted that not a single student asked for help dealing with the problem of self-harm. The method of surveying the students was to use two different surveys, one survey measuring self harm in the entire lifetime (called SHBQ), and one survey measuring acts of self harm within the last 12 months (called FASM). After careful analysis of the FASM survey, the top three reasons for self-harm were (1) to gain the attention of family and friends, (2) in order to stop bad feelings, and (3) to fit into a given group. Through careful analysis of the SHBQ and the FASM, alternative identity was linked to self-harm and suicidal thoughts and attempts. In contrast, other prominent adolescent groups such as the jock and nerd, had very different outcomes. The more strongly someone identified as a jock, the less-likely they were to harm themselves. The survey also shows that students who identified themselves as nerds were no more or less likely to self

and around a 1 in 5 attempting suicide” (Young et al, 2014). They go on to say “...Alternative teenagers [were] between four to eight times more likely to engage in some form of self harm than their peers.” This is a statistic that can not be ignored. Why would so many people be hurting themselves? Well the authors asked that too, and then ranked the results in order of frequency. The number one and two reasons involved gaining attention from other people, but especially parents. In the top ten reasons for adolescent self-harm, was the motive of being like someone that they respect. This is a very interesting point because it indicates social contagion as part of the driving force for self harm. Early in the article the authors site a previous survey that shows 73% of female adolescents and 57% of male adolescents that are actively involved in self harm have friends that self-harm as well. Furthermore, the authors go on to talk about how social contagion was proven in 16 totally different studies, and how the three mechanisms behind it were identified. One of the mechanisms driving social contagion is direct imitation. This is the same thing that happens when a little boy wants to be just like his dad, and so he tries to act like him. It