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Published on: November 21, 2013
Life Events Predicting the First Onset of Adolescent Direct Self-Injurious Behavior-A Prospective Multicenter Study
Michael Kaess1, Lena Eppelmann2, Romuald Brunner3
1University Hospital of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, University of Bern, Bern, Switzerland; Section of Translational Child and Adolescent Psychobiology, Clinic of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, Centre of Psychosocial Medicine, University Hospital Heidelberg, Heidelberg, Germany.
Purpose:
Self-injurious behavior is a frequent phenomenon in adolescence. The present study prospectively examined life events as risk factors for the first onset of direct self-injurious behavior (D-SIB) in the Saving and Empowering Young Lives in Europe school-based multicenter sample.
Methods:
Longitudinal assessments with an interval of 1 year were performed within a sample of 1,933 adolescents (51.47% females; mean age 14.84 ± .9 years) from 10 European countries and Israel.
Results:
The number of life events during the past 6 months predicted the first onset of D-SIB in the following year. Gender neither predicted the onset of D-SIB nor moderated the association with life events. Moreover, analyses of individual events identified a range of mainly interpersonal events within both family and peer group as proximal risk factors for first episode D-SIB.
Conclusions:
The results support the critical role of interpersonal life events in the development of D-SIB for both genders and refine the conceptualization of proximal risk factors in terms of accumulated stressors and interpersonal events.
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