Adolescents are the most prevalent age group for NSSI, the average age of onset is around 13–14 years old. Studies showed that adolescents are vulnerable to NSSI due to the sensitive transitional period in life that happens during adolescent years. NSSI is usually induced by stress and feelings of uncontrollable stress and anxiety, while adolescents and young adults face a wide range of challenging life events, different changes, along with limited mental control to protect them from self-harm decisions. Thus, a high percentage of NSSI participants admits to carrying out self-injure behaviors as a mean of coping mechanism. Adolescents also harbor external and internal factors that put them in the at-risk age group. External factors include childhood events, parenting condition, or peers. Children that went through childhood adversities are more prone to cognitive distortion that tend to permit NSSI behaviors. Severity of such adversities also play a major role in increasing risk for adolescents. Those who grew up with child maltreatment like physical/sexual or emotional abuse, household with drug-use problems, negligence, poverty, exposure to parental violence,... are more likely to develop psychopathology in later years. Women with NSSI tendency are shown to have experienced emotion negligence from both parents and insecure paternal bonding, while men with NSSI tendency are predicted to have gone through parental abandonment, mostly from father. Non physically abusive parenting can also place high susceptibility on adolescents. Parental control refers to when parents want to influence their child either by physical or emotional manipulation, while parental support implies behaviors that are encouraging, accepting, and supportive. Households with heavy use of parental control, and lack thereof of parental support, usually lead to high tendency of NSSI. Internal issues stem from emotional dysregulation and psychological distress also push individuals towards NSSI tendency. Inability to digest and process emotional situations can lead to improper or insufficient awareness and understanding of emotional responses. Misjudgment of emotional surroundings also result in outbursts that are beyond acceptable range of emotional response. Individuals that are under psychological distress also fall into the at-risk group due to constant heightened state of anxiety from demanding stressors and unregulated external stimuli. People with other existing psychological conditions like BPD, EDs, or other dissociative disorders may also develop NSSI. NSSI is often seen as a coping mechanism for patients that are suffering with stress and psychopathology.
Van Gogh syndrome
Van der Woude syndrome
Van Den Bosch syndrome
Koolen–De Vries syndrome
Nezelof syndrome
Crigler–Najjar syndrome
Wildervanck syndrome
DeSanto-Shinawi syndrome