ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Psychiatry
Sec. Adolescent and Young Adult Psychiatry
This article is part of the Research TopicMechanisms and Non-Pharmacological Interventions for Adolescent Mood DisordersView all 6 articles
Risk and protective factors for nonsuicidal self-injury among adolescents: a latent profile analysis
Provisionally accepted
- 1Liaoning Key Laboratory of Psychological Testing and Behavior Analysis, Liaoning University, Shenyang, China
- 2Luoyang Dongsheng No.1 Primary School, Luoyang, China
- 3Faculty of Psychology, Tianjin Normal University, Tianjin, China
- 4The Gifted Division of Northeast Yucai School, Northeast Yucai School, Shenyang, China
- 5School of Discipline Inspection and Supervision, Liaoning University, Shenyang, China
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Despite the longstanding interest in the factors influencing nonsuicidal self-injury (NSSI), less attention has been paid to how risk and protective factors interact to influence adolescents' NSSI behaviors. NSSI is a serious psychological crisis with complex etiology that is usually not triggered by a single chance event. Therefore, assessing NSSI based on risk factors alone is inherently inaccurate. In order to provide a more accurate and comprehensive risk assessment framework, we explored the specific patterns of combinations of risk and protective factors within intra-individual and environmental of adolescents involved in NSSI. 1091 participants were evaluated on six indicators: depression, emotion regulation, regulatory emotional self-efficacy, resilience, family functioning, and social support. The results showed three latent profiles: low risk-high protection (30.62%), medium risk-medium protection (58.20%), and high risk-low protection (11.18%). Compared to low risk-high protection, adolescents in medium risk-medium protection (OR = 2.49) and high risk-low protection (OR = 11.46) were significantly associated with increased odds of experiencing NSSI. The findings suggest that we should focus our prevention efforts on a group of adolescents with high-risk-low-protective characteristics to effectively reduce the incidence of NSSI behaviors by enhancing their protective factors or reducing their risk factors.
Keywords: Non-suicidal self-injury, latent profile analysis, adolescents, Comprehensive assessment, Influencing factors
Received: 26 Sep 2025; Accepted: 10 Nov 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 He, Kong, Ji, Tao, Ge and Yuan. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Feng Yuan, 13591609988@163.com
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