Abstract
BackgroundNon-suicidal self-injury (NSSI) is a behavior of increasing prevalence in adolescents with links to various negative mental health and adjustment outcomes. Poor emotion expression has been linked with NSSI use, whereas the use of adaptive coping strategies has been identified as a protective factor against NSSI. The current study examined whether specific coping strategies moderate the relation between poor emotion expression and NSSI, and whether moderation is conditional on adolescent gender.MethodsNinety-five adolescents hospitalized on an acute care inpatient psychiatric unit completed questionnaires measuring NSSI, emotion expression and use of specific coping strategies (i.e., problem-focused coping, positive reframing coping, support seeking, avoidance, and distraction).ResultsResults indicated that poor emotion expression was positively associated with NSSI. Positive reframing and support seeking emerged as significant moderators of the poor emotion expression—NSSI link. This result was not conditional upon adolescent gender. Problem-focused coping, avoidance, and distraction did not emerge as significant moderators.ConclusionsEncouraging youth to use particular coping strategies might protect against the negative impact of emotion expression deficits for both boys and girls.
Highlights
Non-suicidal self-injury (NSSI) is a behavior of increasing prevalence in adolescents with links to various negative mental health and adjustment outcomes
The current study The current study examined the moderating role of five specific coping strategies on the relation between poor emotion expression and NSSI in a sample of adolescents hospitalized on an inpatient unit
Psychopathology symptoms were not associated with NSSI frequency, so these were not included as a covariate in further analyses
Summary
Non-suicidal self-injury (NSSI) is a behavior of increasing prevalence in adolescents with links to various negative mental health and adjustment outcomes. Sim and colleagues [10] found that emotion expression mediated the link between parental reactions to children’s display of emotions and NSSI in an inpatient sample of adolescent girls. These emotion expression skills—emotion awareness and willingness to express— have been identified as correlates and predictors of NSSI in past research [10,11,12,13,14]. Access to useful coping strategies might be relevant to these adolescents Given these findings, it is important to consider factors that might mitigate the impact of poor emotion expression on NSSI. We investigated unique coping strategies as potential mitigating factors
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