Abstract:

This study aims to explore the predictive role of emotional regulation, anger management style and traumatic experience on Non-suicidal Self-injury (NSSI) behaviour and whether NSSI varies depending on the gender and age of the university students. In addition to this purpose, the gender and age of university students were examined in terms of their relations with the relevant variables. The study is in the realm of the quantitative research which was conducted with 564 university students (female n=492; male n=72; X=20.88). The data were collected through five data collection tools; The Inventory of Statements about Self-Injury Difficulties in Emotion Regulation Scale, Trait Anger and Anger Expression Scale and Impact of Event Scale-Revised as well as the Demographic Information Form. The results of the stepwise regression analyses show that the predictor variables of NSSI are the traumatic experiences, lack of emotion regulation skills and trait anger (F(3,560)=24.14, p<.05). It was found that these three variables explained 19.3% of the variance. Besides the anger management styles, age and gender imply no significant differences on non-suicidal self-injury behaviour of the students. Results suggest that enabling individuals to regulate their negative emotions such as sadness and anger on children and young people especially right after the traumatic experiences would highly contribute to the decrease and/or prevention of non-suicidal self-injury behaviours.

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