Educational styles, peers’ approval and adolescent self-injurious behaviours

The present research aims at understanding how the same body may became object of aggression and destruction by adolescents' self-injurious behaviours. Particularly, self-injurious behaviours are those finalised to destruction or deliberate alteration of one's body, even if without a conscious suicidal intention. The research aims at studying the relationship between educational styles, self-injurious behaviours and the social representation of the phenomenon in a group of adolescents aged between 15 and 19 years. Research has shown that on the basis of self-injurious behaviours there are the perception of an authoritarian educational style and approval by peers and brothers. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.