Summarize, in detail, an uploaded article in psychology Essay

Summarize, in detail, an uploaded article in psychology - Essay Example Klonsky has pointed out that the results of some studies suggest that it is found among 14% of college students, that more women self injure and that self injury has become increasingly common in recent years. The results of studies also show that the tendency to injure oneself first starts to appear between the ages of 14 to 14 and the most common form of injury is skin cutting, which occurs in about 70 to 97% of individuals. Self injury can be damaging for individuals because it causes physical injuries necessitating medical treatment, which could even be severe enough to lead to death. More damaging however, is the psychological distress caused to the victim and his or her loved ones. The rest of the article deals with the 18 empirical studies. Klonsky’s review has included only those studies which directly address the functions of self injury, i.e, studies which assess the motivation and reasons for self injury as well as the variables associated with self injury, such as affect states and preceding events. The seven common functions repeatedly examined in these studies include (a) affect regulation or self injury as a response to alleviate acute negative affect (b) anti-disassociation, or ending the experience of disassociation (c) anti-suicide, or to combat the urge to commit suicide (d) interpersonal boundaries or to assert one’s autonomy (e) interpersonal influence or to seek help from others (f) self punishment and (g) sensation seeking.( Klonsky, 2007:229). The author also states that three primary methodologies have been used in the studies to examine the above functions, namely (i) self reports of injurers where they discuss the reasons why they injure themselves (ii) self report of phenomenology, where self injurers talk about the experience of self injury and (iii) laboratory studies. The laboratory studies do not rely upon self reporting; rather the injurers are asked to perform