Self-injurious behaviors in adolescents with repeated childhood abuse

Objective To examine the relationship between childhood abuse and adolescents.self-injurious behaviors.Methods the investigation was administered to 10 894 middle school students from 16 schools in 4 counties of Anhui province.All participants completed an anony mous questionnaire with infor mation of demography,adverse childhood experiences and self-injurious behaviors.Results the incidence of repeated severe childhood physical abuse was 81.5%,in which the lowest rate was 0.7%(head being pressed under water)and the hig hest was 5.9%(being kicked).there were 23.6%of respondents exposed to repeated moderate childhood physical abuse,in which the lowest rate was 1.5% of being forced to eating their disliked food and the highest was 13.7% of being spanked butto cks with hand or sticks.the incidence of repeated childhood emotional abuse was 2014%,in which the lowest rate was 1.9%(being threatened by speaking of evil spirits)and the highest was 14.8%(being shouted).the rate of self-injurious behaviors was 22.3%.Dose-response trend existed between the number of items of repeated serious childhood physical abuse,moderate childhood physical abuse,childhood emotional abuse and the rates of general self-injurious behaviors and 6 kinds of self-injurious behav iors.Unconditional multi-variatelogistic regression results showed that the three forms of repeated childhood maltreatment were the risk factors for the adolescents' self-injurious behaviors.Conclusion Childhood abuses had negative influence on self-injurious behaviors in adolescents.