A study of protective factors against substance use and sexual risk taking was conducted among 610 high-poverty urban youth. Higher levels of family attachment, social support, involvement, and self-esteem were associated with lower levels of risk behaviors.

The authors conducted a phenomenological inquiry of 12 individuals who recovered from nonsuicidal self-injury without psychotherapeutic or medical intervention. Results indicated that participants' naturalistic recovery emanated from their recognition of serious physical damage, corrective interpersonal influences, and movement from unhealthy to healthy surroundings. Implications of these findings for clinical practice and future research are discussed.

In the present investigation, increased levels of spiritual discontent religious coping were associated with increased nonsuicidal self-injury (NSSI) among study participants. Spiritual discontent religious coping is a negative religious coping style that involves beliefs about being abandoned and ignored by God or a higher power during times of stress. We examined the bivariate and multivariate relationships between NSSI and four types of spiritual/religious coping. While three types of spiritual/religious coping were associated with NSSI in bivariate correlation analyses, only one type of coping—spiritual discontent religious coping—was associated with NSSI in a hierarchical regression analysis. We discuss the research and mental health counseling implications of these findings.

For this study the researchers recruited a random sample of college men and women (N = 390) and examined whether a pessimistic explanatory style mediated the relationship between childhood emotional abuse and frequency of nonsuicidal self-injury (NSSI) in the past year. The study found that pessimistic explanatory style was positively associated with NSSI and that pessimistic style functioned as a partial mediator of the childhood emotional abuse-NSSI relation. Clinical implications for mental health counselors are discussed.

Although spiritual and religious themes have been found to be salient for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender (LGBT) individuals, a paucity of research has explored how these themes are attended to in the counseling context. This qualitative investigation used a narratology approach to explore the counseling experiences of seven LGBT clients around spiritual and religious issues. The narrative which emerged included (a) negative counseling experiences, (b) client perseverance in locating additional counseling, (c) positive counseling experiences, and (d) a reframing of counselor responsibility. The results of this study contain implications for future research, clinical practice, and counselor training.