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Association of direct and indirect aggression and victimization with self-harm in young adolescents: A person-oriented approach

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 July 2018

Daiva Daukantaitė Open the ORCID record for Daiva Daukantaitė [Opens in a new window] ,
Lars-Gunnar Lundh  and
Margit Wångby-Lundh
Daiva Daukantaitė*
Affiliation:
Department of Psychology, Lund University
Lars-Gunnar Lundh
Affiliation:
Department of Psychology, Lund University
Margit Wångby-Lundh
Affiliation:
Department of Psychology, Lund University
*
Address correspondence and reprint requests to: Daiva Daukantaitė, Department of Psychology, Lund University, Box 213, 221 00 Lund, Sweden; E-mail: Daiva.Daukantaite@psy.lu.se.
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Abstract

We sought to determine which patterns of direct and indirect aggression and victimization are most clearly associated with self-harm in adolescent girls and boys cross-sectionally at two time points, as well as prospectively over one year. A cluster analysis using the LICUR procedure (Bergman, 1998) was employed to identify stable patterns of aggression and victimization in a community cohort of 883 Swedish adolescents (51% girls; mean age 14.5). The results showed that a pattern combining high aggression with high victimization was consistently associated with high levels of self-harm in both genders, both cross-sectionally and prospectively. Additionally, this pattern of aggressive victims was a clear risk factor for the development of repetitive self-harm over a one-year period in both girls (odds ratio 13.58) and boys (odds ratio 5.72). We also found several gender differences: In girls, subgroups characterized by high victimization (aggressive victims and non-aggressive victims) had the highest levels of self-harm, whereas in boys the patterns characterized by high aggression (aggressive victims and aggressive non-victims) seemed more relevant. The findings concerning the aggressive victim cluster are clear warning signs of severe psychopathology and possible psychiatric diagnosis in this subgroup of girls and boys.

Type
Regular Articles
Information
Development and Psychopathology , Volume 31 , Issue 2 , May 2019 , pp. 727 - 739
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2018 

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