The role of empirical avoidance and difficulty in regulating emotion in predicting self-harm behaviors in adolescent girls with a history of running away from home

The aim of this study was to investigate the role of empirical avoidance and difficulty in emotion regulation in predicting self-harm behaviors in adolescent girls with a history of running away from home. This research was descriptive and correlational. The statistical population of this study was all adolescent girls who referred to harm reduction centers and night shelters in Tehran in 1399, from which 90 people with a history of running away from home were selected by convenience sampling. Research instruments included the standard self-harm questionnaire by Sansone et al. (1998), the Bond et al. Acceptance and Practice Scale (2011), and the difficulty in regulating emotion by Gratz and Roemer (2004). Stepwise regression was used to analyze the data. Findings showed that empirical avoidance and difficulty in emotion regulation had a significant positive relationship with self-harming behaviors (P <0.01).  The results also showed that empirical avoidance predicts 0.46, lack of emotional awareness 0.21, and lack of access to emotional behaviors 0.31 of self-harming behaviors. Given the role of empirical avoidance and difficulty in emotion regulation in predicting self-harm, it seems necessary to conduct workshops based on emotion regulation and empirical avoidance.