Risk of Self-Harm Higher in Adolescents With Stressed Parents

Children whose parents experience parenting stress and other parenting issues may have a higher risk of nonsuicidal self-injury in adolescence, astudy in theJournal of the American Academy of Child& Adolescent Psychiatry has found.Tove Wichstr øm, M.A., and Lars Wichstrøm, Ph.D., of the Norwegian University of Science and Technology in Trondheim, Norway, examined data from 759 Norwegian adolescents at age 12, 14, or 16 years to determine the adolescents ' rate of nonsuicidal self-injury as measured by the Child and Adolescent Psychiatric Assessment. The researchers also examined data provided by the adolescents ' parents, teachers, and the youth themselves collected when the adolescents were 6 years old. Childhood data included parental characteristics (parental stress, parental depression, perceived parental hostility, and perceived emotional availability), childhood characteristics (negative affectivity, emotion regulation, symptoms of emotional disorders, and symptoms of behavioral disorders), and negative childhood life events such as victimization by bullying.Overall, 10% of the adolescents reported nonsuicidal self-injury during the preceding 12 months at 12, 14, or 16 years of age. Females had 11.6 times the odds of nonsuicidal self-injury compared with males. Adolescents whose parents reported parental stress when the adolescents were 6 years old had 4.8 times the odds of reporting nonsuicidal self-injury compared with adolescents whose parents did not report pa...
Source: Psychiatr News - Category: Psychiatry Tags: children hostility JAACAP parent-child interactions parental stress self-harm self-injury Source Type: research