Observational Study
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World J Psychiatry. Mar 19, 2022; 12(3): 494-504
Published online Mar 19, 2022. doi: 10.5498/wjp.v12.i3.494
Personality traits and self-harm behaviors among Chinese children and adolescents: The mediating effect of psychological resilience
Xue-Yang Jiao, Chuan-Zhi Xu, Ying Chen, Qing-Lan Peng, Hai-Liang Ran, Yu-San Che, Die Fang, Jun-Wei Peng, Lin Chen, Si-Fan Wang, Yuan-Yuan Xiao
Xue-Yang Jiao, Chuan-Zhi Xu, Ying Chen, Qing-Lan Peng, Hai-Liang Ran, Yu-San Che, Die Fang, Jun-Wei Peng, Lin Chen, Si-Fan Wang, Yuan-Yuan Xiao, School of Public Health, Kunming Medical University, Kunming 650500, Yunnan Province, China
Author contributions: Xiao YY conceived the study; Jiao XY, Xu CZ, Chen Y, Peng QL, Ran HL, Che YS, Fang D, Peng JW, Chen L, and Wang SF collected, verified, and analyzed the data; Jiao XY and Xu CZ drafted the manuscript; all authors provided critical revision of the manuscript for important intellectual content.
Supported by National Natural Science Foundation of China, No. 82060601; Top Young Talents of Yunnan Ten Thousand Talents Plan, No. YNWR-QNBJ-2018-286; and the Innovative Research Team of Yunnan Province, No. 202005AE160002.
Institutional review board statement: The study protocol was reviewed and approved by the Ethics Review Board of Kunming Medical University, No. KMMU2020MEC047.
Conflict-of-interest statement: The authors declare no conflict of interest.
Data sharing statement: The analytical dataset of the current study can be obtained from the corresponding author under reasonable request.
STROBE statement: The authors have read the STROBE Statement—checklist of items, and the manuscript was prepared and revised according to the STROBE Statement—checklist of items.
Open-Access: This article is an open-access article that was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: https://creativecommons.org/Licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Corresponding author: Yuan-Yuan Xiao, PhD, Professor, School of Public Health, Kunming Medical University, No. 1168 Chunrong West Road, Kunming 650500, Yunnan Province, China. 33225647@qq.com
Received: September 6, 2021
Peer-review started: September 6, 2021
First decision: December 27, 2021
Revised: January 5, 2022
Accepted: February 16, 2022
Article in press: February 16, 2022
Published online: March 19, 2022
ARTICLE HIGHLIGHTS
Research background

Children and adolescents are at increased risk of self-harm (SH), an established indicator of future suicide. Published studies support a positive relationship between personality traits and SH. There is a possibility that resilience may play a mediating role in the association between personality traits and SH; however, this hypothesis has never been thoroughly investigated.

Research motivation

The current study aimed to provide valuable evidence for identifying personality traits that are associated with SH in children and adolescents.

Research objectives

To investigate resilience as a mediator of the association between personality traits and SH among a large representative sample of Chinese children and adolescents.

Research methods

We surveyed 4780 children and adolescents from Kaiyuan City, Honghe Prefecture, Yunnan province, China. The children’s version of the Eysenck Personality Questionnaire was used to assess the personality traits. The Chinese Youth psychological resilience scale was used to measure the level of resilience. The revised version of the Adolescent Self-harm Scale was used to measure the lifetime prevalence of SH among the survey subjects. We used univariate and multivariate logistic regression models and path analysis to evaluate resilience as a mediator.

Research results

Among the 4471 subjects included into the final analysis, the prevalence of SH was 40.1% (95%CI: 34.4%-46.0%). For different dimensions of personality traits, higher E-dimension scores and lower N- and P-dimension scores were associated with a lower SH prevalence. Resilience was identified as an obvious mediator of the associations between the three dimensions of personality and SH, accounting for 21.5%, 4.53%, and 9.65%, respectively, of the total associations. In addition, we found that, among the five dimensions of resilience, only emotion regulation was identified as a significant mediator.

Research conclusions

According to the current research results, we found that resilience was a significant mediator of the association between personality traits and SH, especially the dimension of emotion regulation. Intervention measures which aim to improve resilience may be effective in preventing personality traits that are associated with SH in Chinese children and adolescents.

Research perspectives

Future interventional studies are warranted to further corroborate our major findings.