Injury characteristics across functional classes of self-injurious behavior

Abstract

Self-injurious behavior (SIB) is inherently problematic because it can lead to injuries, including those that are quite severe and may result in loss of function or permanent disfigurement. The current study replicated and extended Rooker et al. (2018) by classifying the physical characteristics of injuries across groups of individuals with automatically maintained SIB (ASIB Subtypes 2 and 3) and socially maintained SIB. Individuals with Subtype 2 ASIB had the most frequent and severe injuries. Further, an inverse relation was found between the level of differentiation in the functional analysis and the number of injuries across groups. Studying the response products of SIB (the injuries) documents the risks associated with SIB, justifies the need for research and the intensive intervention, and advances knowledge of SIB. Additional research is needed to replicate these findings, and determine the variables that produce different characteristics of injury secondary to SIB.

Keywords: automatically maintained; functional analysis; injury; self-injury.

Figure 1.

Injury characteristics for all individuals across groups. Top panel (body images) shows the type: abrasion/laceration (triangle) or contusion (circle), and approximate location of each injury in each group. Bottom panel shows the the number (denoted by the number) and severity of injuries for each participant (denoted by the shading of the box): mild (white box with number), moderate (grey box with number), and severe (black box with number). For two individuals at two locations, two different severities of injuries were noted (Participant 4, six mild and two moderate on the arms; participant 5, one mild and three moderate on the lower torso); in these cases the box is shaded to indicate the more severe injury.

Figure 2.

The percentage differentiation plotted against the number of injuries from the Self-Injury Trauma Scale for each participant. Icon shape indicates the participant’s group. When the same level of differentiation and number of injuries were present for two individuals, the data point for one of these individuals was nudged to the right. In all cases, this occurred with 100% differentiation.