Non Suicidal Self-Injury Research Paper

There has been a rise in awareness among medical and mental health professionals on the alarming surge and prevalence in deliberate non-suicidal self-injury (NSSI) among children and adolescents for the past couple of decades (Kamen 2009). NSSI is not impartial to any one group or class; it is affecting all social, economic, and ethnic groups. The act of individuals hurting themselves is most commonly reported to be the act of harming and injuring one’s own body by scratching, punching, biting ripping cutting, and tearing or carving into the skin with a sharp object (Whitlock et al., 2006). In addition, Nock et al. (2006) reported that self-harmers most probably suffer from other mental health problems, such as, depression, obsessive-compulsive

Many youth have disclosed to me and other providers that they self-harm when they are frustrated, they cannot cope, they feel that they have lost control of their surroundings and they get overwhelmed. They have reported that by self-harming they experience a tremendous feeling of relief to their emotional pain while they are feeling physical

As they report that self-injury in children and adolescents has only recently been recognized as a commonly occurring phenomenon. As noted by Nock (2012), there has been documentation of the existence of NSSI for thousands of years, but research on NSSI recently started about twenty years ago. Many limitations have been found in NSSI research since the epidemiologic research on both suicidal and non-suicidal self-injury has focused extensively on adult samples only; consequently, causing important long-term data on children and adolescents engaged in NSSI very limited (Kerr et al., 2010). As previously mentioned, due to the prevalence and seriousness of youth engaged in NSSI, it is essential to obtain valid and reliable information to better understand youth’s engagement in NSSI during their vital developmental stages. More research in this area is needed in order to recognize the risk factors to properly implement effective preventive healthcare and mental health treatment (Kessler et al.,