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Category: Project

Description: Non-suicidal self-injury (NSSI) poses significant mental health challenges among emerging adults. Emotions of anger, with both anger at self and at others, can be related to the manifestation of NSSI. However, important research questions remain unaddressed regarding differences in anger between emerging adults with and without past-year NSSI and its role as a real-time predictor of NSSI thoughts and behaviors among emerging adults who self-injure. Specifically, at the between-person level, there is a need to understand whether (1) mean levels of anger at self and others differ in the context of everyday life between emerging adults with and without past year NSSI, (2) greater mean levels of anger at self and others are related to mean levels of NSSI cognitions and behaviors (i.e., intensity of NSSI thoughts, self-efficacy to resist NSSI, propensity to engage in NSSI), and (3) negative urgency at baseline can explain these between-person differences. Second, at the within-person level, there is a need to investigate the contemporaneous and temporal associations of (4) anger at self with NSSI cognitions, (5) anger at others with NSSI cognitions, and (6) whether these associations extend to NSSI behavior in daily life. To address these gaps, we will use ecological momentary assessment data (i.e., 8 daily surveys for 12 consecutive days) among 60 emerging adults attending college (in total 4,587 longitudinal assessments, 83.3% median compliance), of whom 30 reported NSSI behavior in the past year.