Epidemiologic Investigation Of Self-Mutilation Behavior Among Adolescents In Wuhan And Its Functional Model

Self-Mutilation is a kind of familiar behavior with great harm while especially prevalent among adolescents. Even so, this behavior has not been getting enough attention all the while, and therefore, the knowledge of it is still very insufficient. At present, some basic information about Self-Mutilation behavior, such as utilization frequencies of different methods to Self-Mutilation and the average age of Self-Mutilation for the first time, is still in controversial according to different studies results in foreign countries. However, this field in our country is basically blank even more.So, using foreign existing research tool as reference and also after ameliorating, this research compiles Questionnaire for Middle School Students' Behavior. The credibility and validity of the questionnaire are analyzed and proved. Results show that they are appropriate for the study.Regard this questionnaire as investigation tool, this research is devoted to do a research about epidemiology study of the center urban middle school students in Wuhan in large-scale at first, in order to know more about the situation of Self-Mutilation behavior in our country;On this basis, probes into teenagers demography variables and family economy variables influencing the occurrence of Self-Mutilation;And finally as regards the 38 reasons for Self-Mutilation in the formal questionnaire, exploratory factor analysis is carried on to attempt to look for the function model regarding teenagers' Self-Mutilation.The results are the following:1. Self-Mutilation behavior is really rather prevalent among adolescents, the occurrence rate of which reaches 57.4% in this research;Consistent with past results of related studies, 57% of the informants Self-Mutilate between 12 to 15 years old for the first time, with the mean of 12.35 years old. There is no prominent difference between boys and girls as regards behavioral occurrence rate, but there are differences at some behavioral types. The behavior has high repeated occurrence rate, and most teenagers select more than one way for use.2. Not entirely consistent with past results of studies that the character of impulsionwhen self-mutilating and numbers of friends having self mutilated correlate in low level with pain experience during the implementation of the behavior. There is relatively higher correlation between numbers of friends having self-mutilated and drug or alcohol use before or during the course of the behavior. In addition, as for the two groups "having" or "not having" friends self-mutilating, reasons behind the behavior appear certain differences.3. Mothers as managers or cadres, family monthly income whether from 3000 to 8000 Yuan or more than 8000, whether or not living with parents, these four indexes can prominent predict the overall score of Self-Mutilation behavior.4. Result of exploratory factor analysis shows that after deleting two of them, the 38 reasons presented in the formal questionnaire are merged into 4 factors, which are temporarily named as "self-management", "quest for control", "display strength", and "sensation seeking", explaining 25.57% , 7.63% , 6.66% and 4.43% of the total variance separately. Generally speaking, this result is rather satisfactory, and the four factors explain 44.30% of the total variance.