Understanding non-suicidal self-injury in college populations

Non-suicidal self-injury is the direct and deliberate destruction of one‘s own body tissue without suicidal intent. The present study: (1) compares non self-injurious coping strategy use between participants who self-injure and those who do not; (2) extends the Four Function Model (Nock & Prinstein, 2004) to a nonclinical sample of college students; and (3) tests the validity of the Four Function Model, which describes and categorizes 22 possible reasons for self-injuring. Participants included 272 undergraduate students of which 66 self-injured. Participants took an online survey; questions were from the "How I Deal with Stress" inventory (Heath & Ross, 2007) and the "Functional Assessment of Self-Mutilation" (Lloyd-Richardson, Kelly, & Hope, 1997). The study found that self-injurers use coping strategies associated with impulsivity and that they self-injure in order to stop bad feeling and punish themselves. The study also found the Four Function Model requires a different construct when describing why college students self-injure.