Skip to main content

ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Front. Psychiatry
Sec. Adolescent and Young Adult Psychiatry
Volume 15 - 2024 | doi: 10.3389/fpsyt.2024.1470371

Non-Suicidal Self-Injury in Chinese Adolescents: Longitudinal Associations with Negative Life Events and Life Satisfaction

Provisionally accepted
Zhansheng Xu Zhansheng Xu 1Yaxin Kong Yaxin Kong 1Mingyangjia Tian Mingyangjia Tian 1*Yang Yang Yang Yang 1,2*Yu Liu Yu Liu 3Lin Lin Lin Lin 1*
  • 1 Faculty of Psychology, Tianjin Normal University, Tianjin, China
  • 2 Beijing Normal University, Beijing, Beijing Municipality, China
  • 3 Zhejiang Normal University, Jinhua, Zhejiang Province, China

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

    Objectives: The relationship between negative life events, life satisfaction, and nonsuicidal self-injury has been demonstrated in adolescence, but no study has examined the longitudinal associations between the three over time. The present study hypothesized that negative life events play a mediating role in the relationship between life satisfaction and non-suicidal self-injury over time.Methods: A total of 268 junior high school students participated in three questionnaires with an interval of half a year and completed questionnaires investigating the Adolescents Self-Harm Scale, the Adolescent Self-Rating Life Events Checklist, and the Satisfaction with Life Scale.Results: The results indicated a significant predictive role of negative life events in non-suicidal self-injury over time and the prospective effect of life satisfaction on negative life events in adolescence. Negative life events play an intertemporal mediation in the relationship between life satisfaction and non-suicidal self-injury.Conclusion: As a clear non-suicidal self-injury risk factor, negative life events can significantly predict non-suicidal self-injury in adolescence whether it is horizontal or vertical. Junior high school students who are exposed to more negative life events are more likely to have non-suicidal self-injury behaviors and the negative life events have a certain lagging effect on non-suicidal self-injury. Due to the prospective effect of life satisfaction on negative life events in adolescents, negative life events play a mediation in the relationship between life satisfaction and non-suicidal self-injury over time.

    Keywords: adolescence, Negative life events, life satisfaction, Non-suicidal self-injury, longitudinal study

    Received: 25 Jul 2024; Accepted: 14 Oct 2024.

    Copyright: © 2024 Xu, Kong, Tian, Yang, Liu and Lin. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

    * Correspondence:
    Mingyangjia Tian, Faculty of Psychology, Tianjin Normal University, Tianjin, 300387, China
    Yang Yang, Faculty of Psychology, Tianjin Normal University, Tianjin, 300387, China
    Lin Lin, Faculty of Psychology, Tianjin Normal University, Tianjin, 300387, China

    Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.