What is it about?
Adversity, or negative experiences are known to be associated with self-harm. Most existing measures are lengthy, are event exposure inventories, or focus on childhood adversity. There is increasing recognition that broader adversities (e.g., generally feeling bad things happen to you, or not enjoying where you live) may be important for self-harm. Our study provides initial validation for a broad measure of adversity, and assesses how it predicts self-harm, alongside known risks such as depression and anxiety.
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Why is it important?
Our findings show a brief measure of social adversity is associated with self-harm, and clarifies this effect is likely explained through depression symptoms. This suggests that assessments of self-harm should include broad measures of adversity, to consider external circumstances, alongside standard mental health symptom measures and measures of self-harm behaviours.
Perspectives
I hope this article helps people to consider how important broader environmental circumstances are for behaviours such as self-harm. The way we think about different clinically-relevant behaviours impacts the way we approach individuals, and treatment approaches for them. We must consider more than symptoms of mental illness to improve our approach to self-harm.
Bella Magner-Parsons
University of Exeter
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Cumulative social adversity as a correlate of self harm: Validity of the Reward Probability Index, PLOS One, March 2026, PLOS,
DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0326682.
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