Relation of Non-Suicidal Self-Harm to Emotion Regulation and Alexithymia in Sexually Abused Children and Adolescents

oleh: M. M. Mohamed

Format: Article
Diterbitkan: Cambridge University Press 2023-03-01

Deskripsi

Introduction Globally, children are abused sexually. It physically and mentally strains society. Abusers can develop eating problems and non-suicidal self-harm. Emotion regulation links purging, NSSI, and abusive situations. We examined 80 13-20-year-olds, 62.5% of whom had CSA, and 30 healthy controls. Victims were given the Toronto Alexithymia Scale, an eating disorders clinical interview, the Difficulties in Emotion Regulation Scale to assess emotion dysregulation, the Self-punishment Scale to assess NSSI, the Mini-Kid for children under 18 and the Structured Clinical Interview for DSM-IV Axis I Disorders (SCID I) for those 18 and older. 62.5 percent have CSA. CSA was connected to emotional dysregulation. Alexithymia is connected with problems describing and identifying feelings and outside oriented thinking. CSA patients exhibited severe self-punishment symptoms, greater than controls. Kids and teens often have CSA. Objectives to look into the link between CSA and NSSI, as well as Alexithymia, emotional eating, and emotion dysregulation. Methods We interviewed 80 mental outpatients from October to February 2019. 30% of healthy controls have CSA. Participants were 10–24-year-olds without PTSD or ASD. Mini-Kid is a 10- to 18-year-old neuropsychiatric interview (Sheehan et al., 1998), Self-injury scale measures non-suicidal self-harm (NSSI), Problems (DERS; Bjureberg et al., 2016) TORONTO ALEXITHYMIA QUESTIONNAIRE (Bagby et al., 1994). The Eating disorders clinical interview (Kutlesic et al., 1998) Results Table. Describing the difference between control group and patients’ group regarding self- punishment scale. Control group Patient group Self-punishment scale N (%) N (%) P value Physical punishment Mild 18 (60) 9 (18) <0.001 Moderate 11 (36.7) 28 (56) Severe 1 (3.3) 13 (26) Thinking & affective punishment Mild 15 (50) 9 (18) 0.001 Moderate 11 (36.7) 16 (32) Severe 4 (13.3) 25 (50) Conclusions CSA survivors had higher rates of self-injury, emotional eating, alexithymia, and emotional dysregulation than healthy controls. CSA victims should be evaluated for non-self-injury, emotional dysregulation, and emotional eating. Disclosure of Interest None Declared