| Abstract [eng] |
Researches often differentiate two groups of self-harming adolescents: those who attempters a suicide, and those who are harming themselves in a non-suicidal way, and they don‘t seek the death. However just a few community-based research, which would directly compare these groups, were done so far, and therefore information about the differences of the psychological peculiarity and self-harming behavior‘s internal factors between the groups is ambivalent. Lifestyle and Coping Skills Questionnaire (Hawton, 2006), adapted and adjusted for the research of adolescents self-harming behavior by A. Laskytė and N. Žemaitienė in 2006, was used in this work. A part of their collected data is also used in this work. The aim: to examine the intrapersonal factors of suicidal and non-suicidal self-harm in a community sample population: the motives, suicidal intentions, the peculiarities of harming self-harm and person‘s psychological traits that could be possibly related to those factors. It also aimed to reveal the typical differences of these factors between the genders. The sample: 15-17 year old Lithuanian pupils who, while answering into Lifestyle and Coping Skills Questionnaire, responded that they were harming themselves at least once in a life time. In the questionnaire while explaining the reasons of self-harming behavior, into the proposition “I wanted to die” they could write “Yes” or “No”- in this way they were separated into two groups: suicidal self-harmers – who wanted to die (n=163) and non-suicidal self-harmers - who didn’t want to die (n=118). Results: more girls than boys were seeking death while harming themselves. The motives of those adolescents who wanted to die and those who didn’t want to die weren’t significantly different. Adolescents of both groups most often were harming themselves in order to show hoe desperate they were feeling or to get relief from a terrible state of mind. Regardless the wish to die, girls and boys were harming themselves with medicine or other substance most often. However the boys who wanted to die same often were using several methods at the same time, and those who didn’t want to die – same often were cutting themselves or harming themselves in another external way. The longer duration of planning and the frequency of deliberate self-harm were significantly related to the wish to die, as it was named, however this relation was of different intensity in the girls’ and boy’s groups. Those who wanted to die, could be characterized as those who have the higher level of depressiveness and anxiety, and lower self-esteem. Conclusions: we noticed significant differences between the psychological and behavioral peculiarities of self-harming adolescents who wanted or who didn’t want to die, and specialists who are working with adolescents should necessarily consider them. However girls’ and boys’ groups also significantly differ, therefore even if we knew whether the teenager wanted to die, while analyzing the motives of self- harming behavior we should consider the specificities of the gender. |
