Non-Suicidal Self-Injury Online Posts: Implications for Mental Health Professionals

TL;DR

This study analyzes pro-NSSI Reddit posts using linguistic tools to understand the behavior, revealing insights into the emotional and psychological states of individuals engaging in NSSI, and challenging common myths.

Contribution

It introduces a linguistic analysis of online NSSI posts to better understand motivations and mental states, informing mental health practices.

Findings

High use of first-person singular pronouns indicating distress

Posts predominantly expressed negative emotional tone

Analysis supports dispelling myths about NSSI

Abstract

While non-suicidal self-injury (NSSI) is not a new phenomenon, there is still a limited yet little is still known about understanding of the behavior, the intent behind the behavior and what the individuals themselves say about their behavior. This study collected pro-NSSI public blog posts from Reddit on pro-NSSI and analyzed the content linguistically using LIWC software, in order to examine the use of NSSI specific words, linguistic properties and the psychological linguistic properties. were examined. The results inform current counseling practices by dispelling myths and providing insight into the inner world of people who engage in use NSSII to cope. The most frequently appearing category of For NSSI specific words categories, in the Reddit blogs was the reasons in which one engagesfor engaging in NSSI was the most frequently used in the Reddit blogs. The linguistic properties found in the analysis reflected the predicted results; authors of pro-NSSI posts used demonstrated expected results of first-person singular pronouns extensively, which indicatesing high levels of mental health distress and isolation. The psychological linguistic properties that could be observed of in these public Reddit posts were dominantly in a negative emotional tone which demonstrates youth and impulsivity. The linguistic properties found when these posts were analyzed supports the work of earlier studies that dispelled common myths about NSSI that were circulating in the mental health community. These findings suggest that the language of people who engage in NSSI supports research findings in dispelling common myths about NSSI.