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Cited by 1,234

The DOI matches its Crossref record; 28 of the 28 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.

Why Do People Hurt Themselves?: New Insights Into the Nature and Functions of Self-Injury

Open access
Nock, Matthew K.·2009·Current Directions in Psychological Science

Abstract

Nonsuicidal self-injury (NSSI) is a prevalent but perplexing behavior problem in which people deliberately harm themselves without lethal intent. Research reveals that NSSI typically has its onset during early adolescence; most often involves cutting or carving the skin; and appears equally prevalent across sexes, ethnicities, and socioeconomic statuses. Less is known about why people engage in NSSI. This article presents a theoretical model of the development and maintenance of NSSI. Rather than a symptom of mental disorder, NSSI is conceptualized as a harmful behavior that can serve several intrapersonal (e.g., affect regulation) and interpersonal (e.g., help-seeking) functions. Risk of NSSI is increased by general factors that contribute to problems with affect regulation or interpersonal communication (e.g., childhood abuse) and by specific factors that influence the decision to use NSSI rather than some other behavior to serve these functions (e.g., social modeling). This model synthesizes research from several different areas of the literature and points toward several lines of research needed to further advance the understanding of why people hurt themselves.

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Research works printed but not linked: 2

  1. 10.1037/0021-843X.104.3.471 · doi:10.1037/0021-843x.104.3.471 · Paper page
  2. 10.1037/0022-006X.64.6.1152 · doi:10.1037/0022-006x.64.6.1152 · Paper page

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Metadata

Authors
Nock, M. K.
Venue
Current Directions in Psychological Science
Published
2009-04
Volume
18
Issue
2
Pages
78-83
ISSN
  • 0963-7214 (ISSN-L)
  • 1467-8721
OpenAlex
W2115891951
Cited by
1,234
References
28
FWCI
26.67
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
green
Licence
journals.sagepub.com/page/policies/text-and-data-mining-license (tdm)

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CoChat. (2026). Citation check: Why Do People Hurt Themselves?: New Insights Into the Nature and Functions of Self-Injury. https://app.cochat.ai/papers/10.1111/j.1467-8721.2009.01613.x
The paper
Nock, M. K. (2009). Why Do People Hurt Themselves?: New Insights Into the Nature and Functions of Self-Injury. Current Directions in Psychological Science. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8721.2009.01613.x

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Bibliographic data: Semantic Scholar, OpenAlex, Crossref.

Contains information from the Semantic Scholar Academic Graph Datasets, made available under the ODC Attribution License (ODC-BY 1.0).

Semantic Scholar’s data is described in: Kinney, R., et al. (2023). The Semantic Scholar Open Data Platform. arXiv:2301.10140.