Comparative of emotional schemas and different dimensions of difficulty in emotion regulation in students with self-harm behaviors with students without these behaviors

Self-Harm refers to the deliberate behaviors which people take to harm themselves without suicidal ideation. This study aimed to compare emotional schemas and emotion regulation difficulties between students with and without self-harm behaviors.

in this cross-sectional study, 442 people from students of Kashan University of Medical Sciences during 2020, were selected by convenience sampling. Based on the cut-point of DSHI, 52% (90) participants were placed in the group of people with self-harm behaviors and 48% (83) in the control group. Data were collected through a demographic questionnaire, deliberate self-harm inventory (DSHI), and Leahy's emotional schema scale (LESS) and difficulties in emotion regulation scale (DERS). Data were analyzed by SPSS version of 26th edition, and 0.05 was selected as a P-value. Due to the non-normal distribution of data, the Uman-Whitney test was used.

According to results, defective schemas are more common among students having self-harm behaviors. In students with self-harm behavior, the simplistic view of emotion, rumination, guilt, control, blame, and emotional self-awareness schemas are more common compared to the students without these behaviors. In contrast, the students with self-harm behaviors exhibited less acceptance of feeling, consensus, and validity-by-others schemas than students without self-harm behaviors (P<0.01). Also, they had more difficulties in all areas of emotion regulation except emotional awareness than those who didn't have self-harm behaviors (P<0.01).

Maladaptive emotional schemas and difficulties in emotion regulation were more among people with self-harm behaviors, therefor, improving emotion regulation skills can prevent such behaviors in individuals.