Deliberate Self-harm: a study about the evolution of stable maladaptive strategies

Self-injury is a maladaptive behaviour described as the intentional injuring of one’s own body without suicidal intent. It changes in seriousness of damage, repetitiveness and behaviour functions, and it is very common in adolescents. The Experiential Avoidance model claims it is a negatively reinforced strategy for terminating unwanted emotional arousal. Literature has not revealed the role of diverse factors in affecting such a behaviour. The aim of this study is to model dynamics of self-injury in adolescence, through an agent based modelling (ABM) approach, by focusing on network topologies (i.e., Uniform, Gaussian, Exponential), three main categories of risk factors (i.e., Inner Factors, Outer Factors, Media Factors), and the interaction between nodes. The numerical simulations are seeded by a fixed probability to experience stressful events, considering the final number of self-injurious agents as an order parameter of the system. Numerical results show the combined effect of risk factors and topology, highlighting interesting scenarios about the complex dynamics of the phenomenon. Such a model, once validated, could be applied to other similar maladaptive behaviours, such as gambling addiction, to better understand these behaviours.