Maladaptive personality functioning and non-suicidal self injury in adolescence

Objective: although a large number of studies have investigated the association between non-suicidal self-injury (nssi) and personality pathology, they have adopted exclusively a categorical approach, neglecting the study of maladaptive personality functioning. the aim of the current study is to investigate whether and which dimensions of maladaptive personality functioning are mainly associated with the presence of nssi in a community sample of adolescents. Method: severity of maladaptive personality functioning and nssi were evaluated in 247 adolescents (68.8% females, M = 15.57, sd = 2.24) recruited from middle and secondary schools in northern italy. Results: Results showed that lifetime self-injurers reported more difficulties in domains of Social Concordance, self-control, identity integration and responsibility than adolescents with no lifetime nssi. on the contrary, no significant differences were found in the Relation domain between participants with and without lifetime NSSI. Conclusions: These findings suggest the importance of taking into account a dimensional approach that consider the level of personality functioning in order to deeper understand the association between maladaptive personality and nssi. in particular, our results indicate that intrapersonal aspects of maladaptive personality functioning, rather than interpersonal ones, have a key role in the presence of NSSI during adolescence