In this guest blog,Robert Young, a senior investigator at the MRC/CSO Social and Public Health Sciences Unit, discusses his最新研究进入“替代”青少年的自我伤害行为published inBMC精神病学this week.
我刚刚从临时研究办公室前往30米，到ULM儿童和青少年心理服务大楼地下室的音乐疗法室。在我面前有两个德国“替代”青少年，都提到诊所来帮助控制他们的自我伤害行为。
第一个是(英文)的“爆破出来Park song ‘In The End’, while the second energetically accompanies on the drums. Paul Plener, my psychiatrist co-author, is on bass guitar, while the resident music therapist leads on keyboard.
I, on the other hand, demonstrate my singular lack of musical talent by precariously balancing on some species of Bongo drum, while randomly pawing its surface – hopelessly out of time. This is what happens when an academic researcher makes the bumpy transition from theoretical to applied psychological intervention!
My visit to the clinic is part of an ongoing collaboration with Paul looking at the links between youth sub-culture and self-harm. Despite all we know about the enormous social influence that a teenager’s peer group has on their behaviour, adolescent psychiatrists for the most part steer clear of the murky world of youth sub-culture.
毫无疑问，大约八年前，我对哥特，emo和其他“替代”青少年部落中所描绘的自我伤害的“次要流行病”变得感兴趣。令人惊讶的是，我们的工作发现了牢固的联系，大约有一半的替代青少年从事自我伤害或自杀未遂（与其他青少年相比增加了十倍）。然而，高利率背后的原因仍然难以捉摸，可能有效干预的线索也是如此。
Our recent work,published inBMC精神病学，研究了452名德国少年的自杀和非自杀自我伤害的速度。我们发现，尽管参与者来自另一个国家，并且自上次研究以来有八年的差距，但自我伤害率几乎相同（45.5％）。这粗略地转化为德国替代青少年尝试自杀的七倍，甚至调整了其他主要危险因素（例如欺凌）并没有减弱该关联。
How can we use this research to guide treatment?This researchemphasises the strong, but not necessarily causal, link between adolescent identity and psychopathology, but more intriguingly it suggests that psychological therapy tailored to adolescent identities might be particularly effective.
保罗正在进行的工作探讨了音乐疗法对自我伤害青少年的有用性。音乐疗法在治疗青春期的心理病理学方面也像其他任何形式的疗法一样有效，但是鉴于替代青少年在内在吸引了音乐，并且有自我伤害的高风险，这似乎是完美的治疗匹配。
飞行员的作品证实了这一点，这种方法几乎被“替代”青少年普遍接受，他们通常可能对传统的治疗形式有抵抗力。鉴于基于证据的自我伤害有效治疗的数量很低，因此利用青少年自然倾向是一种创新的前进方式。
I don’t think many teenagers who are *identified* as ‘alternative’ would be terribly willing to *identify* as alternative. They are more likely to tell you that they object to being labeled. In my experience, having grown up around such groups and witnessing self harm, I noticed huge amount of social awareness among these groups. They would always find themselves on the outside socially, because they had a different perspective on life. Usually more liberal, often a little nihilistic, but that usually came from the realisations that there is a lot wrong with the world and that they have little power to do anything about it, and that most of their peers (out side the ‘alternative’ group) are more interested in climbing the social ladder than actually engaging each other about these things. The music I think is an intersting expression of this kind of out look. Most people perceive alternative music as just gloomy, usually because it tackles head on the extremes of human emotion and experience and often feels strongly about numerous world issues. The mainstream of music is often ego centric, and more concerned with being “in the club, getting bitches, making money, buying stuff”. That would make me want to cut myself. Many of these kids are made to feel ostracised because of their alternative outlook and rejection of the (often rather disturbing and consumerist oriented) social norms. Sure, alternative kids self harm, maybe why is also an intersting question.
People don’t understand what its like to be a teen that self harms. I was pretty close to that, and wanted to end my own life at sometimes. Those linkin park songs helped me get through a lot of days. Now I spend time trying to help those in need. I really do like this post.