This article presents a sociologically informed critique of a range of academic literatures relating to self-injury. It is noted how a lack of consensus on definitional issues, together with the inaccurate portrayal of the "typical self-injurer" in the clinical literature, has impeded the development of a sound understanding of self-injury. Some of the more problematic explanations for self-inj...

Background: Although early conceptualisations posited an inverse relationship between psychopathy and self-injury, little research has tested this. Aims: To examine the selfinjurious thoughts and behaviour associated with psychopathy. Method: Data from the MacArthur Violence Risk Assessment Project were used to examine homogenous subtypes of participants based on their responses to six self-inj...

To date, scholars have established associations among nonsuicidal self-injury and sexual abuse, posttraumatic stress symptoms, and dissociation. However, leading theoretical models of the mechanisms underlying the association between trauma and negative outcomes suggest a more parsimonious explanation in that deficits in emotion regulation may underlie these various risk factors for self-injury...

OBJECTIVE The assessment of self-injurious thoughts has been limited by a reliance on what individuals are willing or able to report explicitly. The authors examined a new method that measures self-injurious thoughts by using individuals' reaction times to self-injury-related stimuli on a computerized test. METHOD Eighty-nine adolescents who were not self-injurious (N=36) or had recently enga...

Gender: It is often assumed that females selfinjure more than males, but it is unclear whether or not this is true. Some studies show that females are more likely to self-injure. Others show that males are just as likely to self-injure as females. There is evidence, however, that males and females differ in their reasons for self-injuring and methods used to self-injure. For example, some resea...