Citation

Latina D, Bayram Özdemir S. Psychol. Violence 2021; 11(2): 164-174.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2021, American Psychological Association)

DOI

10.1037/vio0000371

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

OBJECTIVE: Immigrant adolescents are at risk of harming themselves. Interpersonal or acculturative stressors, including ethnic harassment, may contribute to adolescents' engagement in self-harm. Despite a growing interest in the link between ethnic harassment and self-harm among immigrant youth, we have limited knowledge on the conditions that make ethnically harassed adolescents likely to self-harm. Thus, we aimed (a) to examine reasons why ethnically harassed youth self-harm and (b) to identify the conditions that elevate ethnically harassed youth's engagement in self-harm.

METHOD: A total of 536 first- and second-generation immigrant adolescents living in Sweden (261 girls; Mage = 14.42; SD = 1.01) participated in the study and were followed over 1 year. Adolescents who reported more depressive symptoms and who harmed themselves were more likely to drop out.

RESULTS: The cross-sectional results showed that when adolescents were exposed to ethnic harassment, they felt more depressed, and they engaged in self-harm. This pattern was especially true for adolescents who had a strong desire to be perceived as part of the majority (βindirect =.07, z = 2.81, p =.01, 95% confidence interval [.03,.13]). These results were not confirmed longitudinally.

CONCLUSION: The cross-sectional findings suggest that immigrant adolescents wanting to be part of Swedish society may experience a clash between that desire and the responses they get from the society and may use self-harm as a viable way of overcoming ethnic-devaluation experiences. Future studies are needed to replicate our lack of longitudinal results and to provide explanations for this pattern of association. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved)

Language: en