Citation

Kelada L, Hasking PA, Melvin G. J. Marital Fam. Ther. 2016; 42(3): 536-549.

Affiliation

Department of Psychiatry, Monash University.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2016, American Association for Marriage and Family Therapy, Publisher John Wiley and Sons)

DOI

10.1111/jmft.12150

PMID

26725333

Abstract

We explored parent and adolescent reports of family functioning, how this differed if the parent was aware that their child self-injured, and how parental awareness of self-injury was related to self-injury frequency, self-injury severity, and help seeking. Participants were 117 parent-adolescent dyads, in 23 of which the adolescent self-injured. Adolescents who self-injured reported poorer family functioning than their parents, but parents who did not know about their child's self-injury reported similar functioning to parents whose children did not self-injure. Parents were more likely to know that their child self-injured when the behavior was severe and frequent. Help-seeking was more likely when parents knew about self-injury. Family-based interventions which emphasize perspective-taking could be used to effectively treat self-injury.

Language: en