The Impact of Negative Symptoms and Self-Criticism on the Urge to Self-Injure

摘要

Stressful life events brought on by the demands of academic and social life are possibly a factor engendering various negative emotional symptoms, such as depression, anxiety, and stress, in college students. Furthermore, failure to obtain positive feedback may possibly provoke self-criticism in them. These conditions, if not handled properly, will develop maladaptive behavior. Previous studies have found that negative emotional symptoms and self-criticism correlate with self-injury. However, these studies did not explain the impact of variables on self-injury. This study aims to find out how the impact of negative emotional symptoms and self-criticism acts on the urge to self-injure. It was a cross-sectional study populated by 118 college students with the following criteria: aged 18-30 years old, having engaged in self-injury at least once in the past year, having undiagnosed clinical disorders, and not currently undergoing psychotherapy. The result revealed that negative emotional symptoms and self-criticism, as predictors, had a strong correlation (r = 0.744, p = 0.000). Furthermore, both predictors had a moderate correlation with the urge to self-injury (r > 0.400, p = 0.000) and simultaneously impacted on the urge to self-injure by 32 percent (R = 0.564, R～2 = 0.318, Std = 5.209, p = 0.000). According to these results, negative emotional symptoms and self-criticism tendencies were significant factors that contributed to psychological vulnerability in college students. The higher the level of negative emotional symptoms and self-criticism, the higher the urge to self-injure in college students. These findings supported the idea that self-injury is an emotional coping mechanism to release psychological distress. Self-injury is a student's attempt to escape from the pain due to unbearable psychological stress. The high contribution of these variables makes them an issue that must be considered in interventions to deal with self-injury.