Exploring Unique Patterns of Self-Injury Recovery: A Latent Profile Analysis

As nonsuicidal self-injury (NSSI) has become an increasing public health concern, the last few years have seen the emergence of efforts to address NSSI recovery. Although many recovery efforts adopt a medical view of self-injury and focus on cessation of the behaviour, recovery can mean many different things to different people. In this study, we provide initial empirical validation of the self-injury recovery framework, by assessing whether different recovery profiles exist.

Our sample comprised 733 participants with lived experience of NSSI (M age = 24.54, sd = 6.39). Participants completed self-report measures of constructs related to NSSI recovery and NSSI characteristics.

Using latent profile analysis, we identified six unique profiles reflecting differences in thoughts/urges to self-injure, self-efficacy, social support, optimism, coping, underlying adversities, perceptions of scarring, disclosure, resilience and self-compassion. Multivariate analyses of variance confirmed these profiles differed according to NSSI characteristics such as frequency of NSSI, a self-assessment of recovery, the desire to self-injure or avoid self-injury and the number of people disclosed to.

A homogenous sample and cross-sectional design limit generalisability of our findings across populations and across time.

Our findings reinforce that recovery can take many different forms, with different factors being relevant to different individuals. Adopting a person-centred approach that centres an individual's lived experience and emphasises what is important to them in the recovery process offers opportunities for more empathic responses to self-injury and better outcomes for individuals who self-injure.