Coping and resilience as predictors of adolescent self-harm

[摘要] English: Self-harm by adolescents is manifesting as one of the contemporary global mental health problems as incident rates are increasing worldwide. This self-harming trend is increasingly becoming a concern to South African adolescents who seemingly have adopted many practices of the Western World. Given the growing pains of transformation and high violence and crimes rates affecting the youth of the South African democracy, adolescents are being challenged continuously to cope with these circumstances. The aim of the study was to investigate whether coping and resilience can predict adolescent self-harm in the Free State Province in South Africa. A non-experimental, cross-sectional, correlational design was used in this study. A stratified randomised sample of 962 learners from nine schools in the Free State Province was selected. The measuring instruments included a biographical questionnaire, from which the criterion variable was measured in a single closed-ended question, the Coping Schemas Inventory �?Revised, and the Resiliency Scale for Children and Adolescents. A logistic regression analysis method was used to investigate the extent to which coping and resilience can predict self-harming behaviour.Results indicate a prevalence rate of self-harm of 17.35% among respondents. Females were more likely than males were to engage in self-harm (19.4% and 14.5% respectively); thus, gender significantly predicted self-harm (p = 0.025). Tension-reduction coping (p = 0.029) and emotional reactivity (resilience: p = 0.000) predicted membership to the self-harming group(s), whereas social support coping protects adolescents from self-harm (p = 0.017). Collectively, these variables explained 11.2% of the variance in self-harming behaviour.Given the limited research on self-harm in South Africa, it is suggested that further mixed-methods design approaches and longitudinal research be done with a cohort representative of South African adolescents to explore self-harm in the South African context in more detail.

[发布机构] University of the Free State