A study of Hungarian adolescent outpatients suffering from self-injurious behaviour

Abstract

In this pilot study (Study A), the authors administered the Hungarian standard version of Beck Depression Inventory (BDI) and the translated version of the Ottawa Self Injury Inventory (OSI) to students of 3 educational facilities in a county town. Fourteen to eighteen year old pupils were tested in order to measure the key symptoms of depression and the frequency and characteristics of self-injurious behaviour among this sample of the high school population. Twentysix youngsters were found to have had any form of self-injurious actions in their life-time. The paper presents descriptive data on the basis of statistics of symptom occurence. Although the depressive symptoms have an expected correlation with the self-injurious ideas,depression seems not to have the same relationships with actual self-harm action. In study B, the authors present descriptive statistics on the data of 48 female outpatients from the total pool of 72 adolescents aged 14 through to-18 years (average age 16.1 years) showing symptoms of self-injurious behavior according to the Ottawa Self Injury Inventory (OSI). All patients were recruited from a one-year clinical,representative sample of the "Pannonia" multicentre adolescent psychiatry survey. Ten point two percent of consecutively referred and 25.6% of treated adolescent patients had symptoms of self-injurious behavior over a one-year period in 4 Transdanubian Child Psychiatric Centers, which is more frequent than the expected rate. Referring to the clinical diagnoses of adolescents confirmed by M.I.N.I. Plus Diagnostic Interview, the authors estimate, that the majority of these young people suffered from episode(s) of present or past major depression, from whatever form of anxiety disorder and/or from suicidal behaviour. The study presents details of risk behavior including motivations, frequency of acts, ideas, afflicted body regions, emotional correlates, secondary obtained benefits , escalation of problem behavior and consequences in detail.