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Conference Focuses on Adolescent Self Harm
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Amelio A. D’Onofrio, clinical professor and director of Fordham’s Psychological Services Institute, talks about the characteristics and assessment of self-injury.
Photo by Bruce Gilbert
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The psychological research community has largely ignored the growing trend of affluent adolescents who use self-destructive behavior to deal with stress, according to a Fordham psychology professor.
Speaking Feb. 8 at a Graduate School of Education (GSE) conference, Merle A. Keitel, Ph.D., professor of counseling and counseling psychology, said that research into the area hasn’t caught up to the state of clinical cases.
“It is up to us—psychologists, sociologists and school counselors—to learn how to best serve this privileged group of adolescents,” she said.
Keitel was one of five speakers at the conference, titled “Self-Injury, Eating Disorders and Suicidality: Understanding Adolescent Self-Destructiveness,” held on the Lincoln Center campus. It was the first conference staged by GSE’s Psychological Services Institute (PSI), a non-profit organization staffed by psychologists, counselors and trainees offering a wide range of psychological services to adolescents, adults, couples and families.
The event, which attracted more than 200 professionals in the field, covered eating disorders, suicide and self-injury, and how professionals can build therapeutic school communities to assess, prevent and treat such harmful behaviors.
Keitel said psychological researchers have long studied how poverty and stress can go hand in hand.
“But what about affluent children and adolescents?” she asked. “Affluence does not guarantee psychological health or knowledge about effective parenting skills.”
Often, parents who are part of the “wealthy community culture” end up placing tremendous pressure their children.
“Making work and material success the highest priorities has led to increased competition among children,” Keitel said, adding that today’s youth have developed the art of not expressing their emotions.
“This results in symptoms of hurting themselves or others by cutting, eating disorders, suicidal gestures, substance abuse and, most recently, a mass murder on a college campus,” Keitel said.
The conference helped front-line responders such as counselors, social workers, psychologists, school administrators and health care professionals better understand the dynamics underlying adolescent self-harm, said Amelio A. D’Onofrio, clinical professor and PSI director.
“In recent years, there has been an explosion in the increase of adolescent self-harm that has as its focus the direct attack on the body,” said D’Onofrio, author of Adolescent Self-Injury: A Comprehensive Guide for Counselors and Healthcare Professionals (Springer, 2007).
“Self-injury has a powerful meaning to those who engage in the behavior,” he said. “For their purposes, it works. It restores their emotional homeostasis.”
He also said that self-injury is under reported.
“Our literature hasn’t caught up with what’s going on,” D’Onofrio said. “Some studies have found that as high as 41 percent of college students suffer from this disorder. It seems to be growing.”
Among other speakers, a presentation was given by Melinda Parisi, Ph.D., director of the eating disorders program at University Medical Center at Princeton.
Though there has been much research on eating disorders, there is more to be done, in particular on the growing numbers of males who may be suffering from anorexia nervosa and/or bulimia, she said.
“We have 16 beds in our unit [at University Medical Center] and five of our patients are male,” Parisi said. |
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