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Symposia
Suicide and Self-Injury
Samantha E. Wert, B.S. (she/her/hers)
University of Pittsburgh
Wilmette, Illinois, United States
Kiera James, PhD (she/her/hers)
Post-Doctoral Scholar
University of Pittsburgh
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States
Brandon Gibb, Ph.D.
Professor
Binghamton University
Binghamton, New York, United States
Cecile Ladouceur, Ph.D.
Associate Professor of Psychiatry and Psychology
University of Pittsburgh, Department Of Psychiatry
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States
Jennifer S. Silk, Ph.D. (she/her/hers)
Professor
University of Pittsburgh
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States
Non-suicidal self-injury (NSSI) is prevalent in adolescence and a strong risk factor for suicide. Previous work examining the relations between NSSI and family dynamics has shown that adolescents who engage in NSSI report less parental emotional support, more parental criticism, and less positive parent-teen relationships than their peers without a history of NSSI. Despite the interdependence of communication within the parent-teen relationship, however, prior research has largely focused on parenting behaviors and less is known about how youth speak about their parents. Research has also focused on perceived criticism and self-reported feelings of closeness rather than objective measures of expressed emotion (EE) which may better represent the specific types of remarks (both positive and negative) that adolescents experience daily. Thus, the current study examines the extent to which the frequency of mothers’ and daughters’ positive and negative statements about each other differ based on adolescents’ NSSI history.