Van Gogh syndrome
Risk factors
Criteria A: the person must be involved in at least 5 days of self-mutilation without suicidal intention in the past year. However, this number has been reported to be relatively low when compared to realistic rate for adolescents, which was 11 days in one year. Criteria B: persons must commit self-injure behaviors due to interpersonal problems, whether it is to alleviate unpleasant feelings and stress from such problems, or to seek positive feelings and relief. Studies have shown that females tend to expect relief from negative feelings and stress more than males. Criteria C: persons must be struggling from negative feelings and thoughts prior to NSSI, thoughts of NSSI are premeditated and constantly occupied in their minds. Criteria D: self-injure behaviors must be not socially sanctioned or minor wounds. This means that tattoos, piercings, or scab-picking are not considered as NSSI. Criteria E: NSSI-related emotional issues must be interfering with daily tasks like school/work relationships, or performances. Criteria F: NSSI must not overlap other dysfunctional episodes from other mental conditions, like withdrawal symptoms from drug abuse or eating disorders, psychosis, delirium, or substance intoxication. This criteria serves to rule out any consequential characteristics of self-injury behaviors as result of these episodes. Adolescents are the most prevalent age group for NSSI, the average age of onset is around 13–14 years old. Studies showed that adolescents are vulnerable to NSSI due to the sensitive transitional period in life that happens during adolescent years. NSSI is usually induced by stress and feelings of uncontrollable stress and anxiety, while adolescents and young adults face a wide range of challenging life events, different changes, along with limited mental control to protect them from self-harm decisions. Thus, a high percentage of NSSI participants admits to carrying out self-injure behaviors as a mean of coping mechanism. Adolescents also harbor external and internal factors that put them in the at-risk age group. External factors include childhood events, parenting condition, or peers. Children that went through childhood adversities are more prone to cognitive distortion that tend to permit NSSI behaviors. Severity of such adversities also play a major role in increasing risk for adolescents. Those who grew up with child maltreatment like physical/sexual or emotional abuse, household with drug-use problems, negligence, poverty, exposure to parental violence,... are more likely to develop psychopathology in later years. Women with NSSI tendency are shown to have experienced emotion negligence from both parents and insecure paternal bonding, while men with NSSI tendency are predicted to have gone through parental abandonment, mostly from father. Non physically abusive parenting can also place high susceptibility on adolescents. Parental control refers to when parents want to influence their child either by physical or emotional manipulation, while parental support implies behaviors that are encouraging, accepting, and supportive. Households with heavy use of parental control, and lack thereof of parental support, usually lead to high tendency of NSSI. Internal issues stem from emotional dysregulation and psychological distress also push individuals towards NSSI tendency.
Van Gogh syndrome-4