Effect of knowledge of a friend's non-suicidal self-injury behavior on self injury and suicide behaviors of adolescents / 中华行为医学与脑科学杂志

ABSTRACT

Objective:To explore the relationship between knowledge of a friend's non-suicidal self-injury (NSSI) behavior and self injury and suicide behaviors of adolescents.Methods:From January 2020 to January 2021, totally 1 683 students from a middle school in Xiamen were randomly selected by cluster sampling.The suicide items of the self-injurious thoughts and behaviors interview(SITBT) were used to assess whether students were aware of their friends' self injurious history and their self injurious behaviors.The suicide items of the mini international neuropsychiatric interview for children and adolescents (MINI-KID) were used to assess students' suicide ideation and behavior.The data were statistically analyzed by SPSS 21.0 software.Logistic regression model was used to analyze the relationship between knowledge of a friend's NSSI and adolescents' own self-reported NSSI and suicidal behaviors.Results:A total of 1 683 junior and senior high school students completed the survey, including 412 (24.4%) who knew their friend's NSSI history and 1 271 (75.6%) who did not know their friend's NSSI history.There were statistically significant differences between the adolescents known and unknown friends' NSSI histories in terms of age, gender, whether they were left-behind children, mental disorders, their own NSSI, suicide attempts, and suicidal ideation (all P<0.05). Knowledge of a friend's NSSI behavior had positive predictive effect on adolescents' own NSSI behavior ( β=0.558, OR=2.01, 95% CI=1.58-3.88), suicidal ideation( β=0.238, OR=3.03, 95% CI=2.08-5.55), and suicide attempts ( β=0.233, OR=2.88, 95% CI=1.55-5.45) (all P<0.05). Conclusion:Knowledge of a friend's NSSI behavior may have an impact on adolescents' own self-injury and suicidal behavior.