engleski

Prolonged autoaggression in the context of adolescents’ resilience, family victimization and stressful life events

Problems of adolescents’ suicidal behaviour and non-suicidal self-injury behaviour are in the focus of most contemporary prevention programs and social policies aimed at promoting youth mental health. The aim of this study was to explore the interplay of risk and resilience factors in prediction of prolonged adolescents' suicidal ideation and self-injury behaviour. A longitudinal three-wave study (with a one-year interval) was conducted using a two-stage stratified cluster sample of 1st grade pupils from 29 secondary schools in Croatia. Data were collected within the project “Family economic hardship, psychosocial problems and educational outcomes of adolescents in the time of economic crisis”, financed by the Croatian Science Foundation. Initial sample in the first wave included 1 101 pupils, but the analysis presented in this paper included only the data collected from 181 adolescents who had some non- suicidal selfinjury behaviour and/or thoughts about committing suicide in the first grade, and who participated in all three waves of the study. Mean age of these students (71.3% females) in the first wave was 15.22 (SD=0.561). The questionnaire used in this study consisted of two criteria questions regarding non-suicidal self-injury behaviour and thoughts about committing suicide, Resilience scale for adolescents, The stressful life events scale and Parental violence questionnaire. Out of the initial sample of 181 adolescents with autoaggressive behaviour/thoughts, 50.3% also reported nonsuicidal self-injury behaviour and/or thoughts about committing suicide in the third wave. We further studied the differences between those adolescents who stopped behaving autoaggressively and those who showed prolonged autoaggression (according to their data in the third wave). For this purpose, we used the data from the second wave. Discriminant analysis showed that the chosen set of discriminant variables (experienced parental violence, stressful life events and resilience factors) predict prolonged autoaggression with 76% of accuracy (Canonical correlation 0.517, Wilks’ Lambda 0.732). The most important predictors are personal competence, family cohesion, structured style, social competence and experience of parental psychological violence. The significance of these specific predictors will be discussed in the context of practical implications and development of suicide prevention and intervention programs.

autoaggression, adolescents, self-injury behaviour, suicidal ideations, resilience, family vicitimizaton

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