Self-harm: Interpersonal and holistic perspectives
avDelia Latina
Akademisk avhandling
Avhandling för filosofie doktorsexamen i Psykologi, som kommer att försvaras offentligt
Fredag den 12 Februari 2016 kl. 09.15, Hörsal L3, Örebro universitet Opponent: Dr. Susan Rasmussen
University of Strathclyde Glasgow, Scotland, United Kingdom
Örebro universitet
Institutionen för juridik, psykologi och socialt arbete 701 82 ÖREBRO
Abstract
Delia Latina (2016): Self-harm: Interpersonal and holistic perspectives. Örebro Studies in Psychology 35.
Who are the adolescents who purposely cut or burn their wrists, arms, or some other parts of their body? The fundamental question I raise in this dissertation is whether or not the portrait of self-harming adolescents as being exposed to others’ hostility in their everyday life environments and experiencing internal adjustment problems, particularly depressive symp-toms, correctly represents their symptomology. I want to answer three questions: 1) What can be done to interrupt the maladaptive link that leads adolescents who experience internalizing symptoms to perform self-harm-ing behaviors? 2) Are adolescent self-harmers typically exposed to others’ hostility or are they also involved in hostile interactions with other people? and, 3) What are the critical interpersonal and adjustment features of ado-lescent self-harmers? The results show that: 1) Adoado-lescent girls with high depressive symptoms who feel at ease communicating with their parents do not use self-harm as a coping strategy when facing negative emotional ex-periences to the same extent as girls with high depressive symptoms who do not experience communication with parents as easy; 2) Adolescents who are involved in mutually hostile relationships with people who they meet in their daily life express more self-harming behaviors than adolescents who are exposed to others’ hostility; and, 3) Living in mutually hostile in-teractions with other people and experiencing both internalizing and exter-nalizing problems seem to be key features of adolescents who harm them-selves. Taken together, the results of this dissertation go beyond the tradi-tional representation of self-harmers, and offer a holistic way of identifying a problem scenario under which adolescents self-harm. Implications for theory and practice are discussed.
Keywords: self-harming behaviors, relational problems, psychosocial
mal-adjustment, ease of communication with parents, holistic perspective. Delia Latina, School of Law, Psychology and Social Work
