Self-injury in adolescence from an addiction perspective

Few contemporary French studies have focused on the problems of self-injury in adolescents from an addiction perspective. This exploratory qualitative research, inspired by grounded theory, was carried out with eight young people who had accessed youth mental health services at a Maison des Adolescents. We try to understand the many functions of self-injury, as well as the specificities of the young people who practice it, through the perspective of the functions found in addictive practices. The young people we met had experienced traumatic events. They were vulnerable at the narcissistic and identity level and were struggling with the puberty process. Self-injury, like addictive behaviors, fulfills a traumatolytic function, of neutralization, of evacuation of unrepresented affects that are expressed via the body.