The Role of Emotional Responding and Childhood Maltreatment in the Development and Maintenance of Deliberate Self-Harm

Abstract: 

Despite recent findings indicating comparable rates of deliberate self-harm across gender (Gratz, Conrad, & Roemer, 2002; Klonsky, Oltmanns, & Turkheimer, 2003; Muehlenkamp & Gutierrez, 2004; Zoroglu et al., 2003), little research has examined the pathogenesis of self-harm among men. Thus, the present study sought to extend extant research by examining the environmental (i.e., aspects of childhood maltreatment) and individual (i.e., emotional inexpressivity, affect intensity/reactivity, and emotion dysregulation) risk factors associated with the development and maintenance of deliberate self-harm among male undergraduates (N=97). Results indicated that childhood physical abuse and emotion dysregulation distinguished men with frequent self-harm from men without a history of self-harm. Among men with a history of self-harm, emotion dysregulation was associated with more frequent self-harm. However, contrary to predictions, higher affect intensity/reactivity was associated with less frequent self-harm.