Research paper: The Effectiveness of a School-based Self-injury Prevention Program on Reducing Interpersonal Cognitive Distortion and Fear of Negative Evaluation in Adolescent Girls

Abstract

Background: Non-Suicidal Self-Injury (NSSI) is a prevalent, harmful, and transdiagnostic behavior that can comprehensively be assessed in daily life studies.Objectives: This study aimed to determine the effectiveness of the student self-injuryprevention program in mitigating the Interpersonal Cognitive Distortion (ICD) and the fear ofNegative Evaluation (FNE).Materials & Methods: This research is a quasi-experimental study with a pre-test-post-testdesign, a one-month follow-up, and a control group. The statistical population consisted ofall female adolescents studying at the middle schools of Rasht City, Iran, in the 2019–2020academic years. They must have experienced self-injury at least once. The purposive nonrandomsampling technique was employed to select 34 self-injuring adolescents, who werethen randomly assigned to case and control groups. The interpersonal cognitive distortion scaleand the brief fear of negative evaluation scale were adopted to collect data. The case groupreceived 16 sessions of self-injury prevention training for students (twice a week), whereasthe control group had no training programs. Analysis of variance and multivariate analysis ofvariance were then used for data analysis in SPSS v. 25.Results: The results demonstrated the significant effectiveness of the training programin mitigating the ICD (interpersonal rejection: P<0.01; F=21.780, unrealistic relationshipexpectations: P<0.01; F=51.096, interpersonal misperception: P<0.01; F=20.557), reducingnegative meta-emotion, and increasing positive meta-emotion (P<0.05; F=43.591).Conclusion: The student self-injury prevention program effectively reduced the ICD andFNE of female adolescents. Additionally, these two variables have high levels in adolescentsstruggling with self-injury