Depressive disorders and the borderline personality disorders are robustly associated with NSSI. It is still unknown whether or not the occurrence of NSSI with particular disorders can be explained by comorbidity with the borderline syndrome.

No abstract

Children and adolescents with aggressive disorders are prevalent in child welfare settings. Therefore, the assumption is that child welfare services would benefit from a cognitive-behavioral intervention. This study investigates whether implementation of the training with aggressive children (TAC) could improve the outcome of child welfare. Twelve children (average age 10 years), diagnosed with an oppositional defiant disorder or a conduct disorder, are treated either with a child welfare program or with a combined intervention of child welfare program and TAC. Before and immediately after completion of the combined treatment, parent and teacher ratings are collected. Parents report children participating in child welfare and TAC to show a stronger decline in social and conduct problems as well as a clearer increase in prosocial behavior. Teachers see a better improvement in social problems and tended to report a decrease in aggressive behavior. Results confirm that the TAC can enhance effects of a child welfare program.

In Germany, there are no self-report questionnaires assessing emotion awareness in youth under the age of 16 years or simultaneously with emotion suppression. The "Emotion Expression Scale for Children" (EESC) measuring lack of emotion awareness and reluctance to express emotions in 10-to 15-year-olds can fill this gap. Goal of this study was to evaluate the factorial structure of the German version of the 16-item EESC in a test and a validation sample of overall 588 adolescents (314 boys; M age = 11.6 years; SD = .74). The original structure comprised of the factors "Poor Awareness" and "Expressive Reluctance" could not be confirmed in the test sample using confirmatory factor analysis. An exploratory factor analysis yield a one-factor structure. Modification process led to an adjusted one-factor model with 13 items, which fitted the data best in the validation sample. The factor was named "Low Emotion Awareness/ Suppression." Results indicated that the EESC structure is not measurement invariant. Reasons for missing fit of the two-factor model are discussed.

Three criteria for differential diagnosis of non-suicidal self-injury and suicide attempts were validated by means of more recent empirical studies. Criteria concerning motives (functions), methods of self-injury (medical severity), lifetime frequency and lifetime number of episodes were investigated. Literature research showed only a few studies concentrated on a direct comparison of non-suicidal self-injury and suicide attempts. Therefore, studies examing the relationship of suicide intent to the relevant features, are considered, too. Empirical results concerning motives (functions), methods (medical severity), lifetime frequency and number of episodes were compared to the three criteria. Except for lifetime frequency, studies support the criteria. However, in the case of motives, a more differentiated examination is needed to distinguish between non-suicidal self-injury and suicide attempts. To optimize the assessment, guidelines should be slightly modified. Because of the phenomenological overlap of non-suicidal self-injury and suicide attempts, a dimensional assessment can be helpful.