May 06, 2022 06:00:00

Thinking about suicide and self-harm turned out to reduce stress

Some of the people who have had a crushing pain, such as the death of a loved one or a big setback, must have had a suicide. However, new research reveals that thinking about 'suicide and self-harm,' which is a risk of death for living things, may rather hide a mechanism for surviving adversity. .. This is expected to advance efforts to prevent suicide and self-harm.

A meta-analysis on the affect regulation function of real-time self-injurious thoughts and behaviors | Nature Human Behavior

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-022-01340-8

Thinking About Suicide and Self-Harming Alleviates Stress --Neuroscience News
https://neurosciencenews.com/stress-suicide-self-harm-20502/

It is reported that 10% of junior and senior high school students in Japan have experience of self-harm, and it is reported that 'nearly 40% of suicide victims have a history of past suicide attempts' ( PDF file) . Is a serious social problem. Suicide is the leading cause of death among young people in developed countries other than Japan, but research on the comprehensive background of why people hurt themselves or think of suicide in the first place has not received much attention. bottom.

This time, a research team led by Kevin Kuhn of the Faculty of Psychology at the University of Washington conducted a

meta-analysis of literature dealing with suicidal ideation and self-harm to quantify the effects of thoughts on suicide and self-harm on humans. I did it. According to the research team, suicidal ideation and non-suicide self-harm (NSSI) were analyzed together because NSSI is a risk factor for suicide.

The research team analyzed a total of 1644 survey data from 38 documents and found that there was a high level of mental distress before both self-harm and suicidal ideation. It also turned out that after them the stress was reduced. This suggests that the subjects experienced self-harm and suicidal ideation after experiencing intense stress, which may be related to stress relief.

The study also highlighted that most of the people who died from suicide had not been treated for mental health. The research team says these findings can help with suicide prevention efforts, such as training to replace self-harm and suicidal ideation with other stress-relieving measures.

On the other hand, the research team also pointed out that the study has restrictions such as '80% of the survey data used are women and 75% are Caucasian.' Further research in the future will require increased gender and racial diversity, he said. In addition, it is a future task to identify the specific process by which stress leads to thoughts and actions that hurt oneself.

'The good news is that there are treatments, such as cognitive-behavioral therapy and dialectical behavioral therapy , that help control emotions rather than hurt oneself,' Kuhn said. By connecting more care to those who are suffering from behavior, those problems will be reduced. '