Self harm in adolescence: The context of the real versus virtual enviroment and emo and gothic subcultures

Autor	Bc. Alena Černá, Doc. PhDr. David Šmahel, Ph.D.
Organisation	Psychologický ústav AV ČR
Year	2009
Research type	study
Annotation	The article focuses on self harming as maladaptive coping strategy in adolescents. The role of real and virtual environment of adolescents, which is important for this phenomenon, is emphasized. The research is of explorative character, data has been collected through half-structured online interviews with 9 adolescent girls aged 15 through 18, who write about self harming on their blogs (online diaries), and analysed using the grounded theory method. It has been found that both real and virtual environment can have a huge impact on the emergence of self harming behavior in adolescents, its character and experiencing. Both environments might act as a medium for spreading knowledge of self harming and even as a source of self harming itself. Although the self harming online community is being looked at as supportive, it did not bring an end to self harming behavior in the case of our respondents, unlike the real social environment. On the contrary, the risk of normalisation of this behavior by sharing information on blogs occurred. The real social environment is then an important helper in ending the self harming behavior. The intersection of real and virtual environment of adolescents might be the Emo and Gothic subcultures. The connection of subcultures and self harming is being widely discussed by media in these days. In our research we did not prove such a connection.
Keywords	self harm; communities; subcultures, Emo, Gothic
Research type	qualitative
Start date	1. 1. 2009
End date	31. 12. 2009
Obor	AN Psychology
Note	Černá, A., & Šmahel, D. (2009). Sebepoškozování v adolescenci: kontext reálného versus virtuálního prostředí a subkultur Emo a Gothic. E-psychologie [online], 3(4), 26-44. Available at WWW: . ISSN 1802-8853.
Email	181831@mail.muni.cz
Availability	available in the NRVDM electronic library
Download research	1355738267.pdf
Research location	Psychologický ústav AV ČR, Veveří 97, Brno 60200
Organisation	Psychologický ústav AV ČR
Possible connection	Children and Youth Ratio in population