An RDoC-based approach to adolescent self-injurious thoughts and behaviors: The interactive role of social affiliation and cardiac arousal

Abstract

Recent theoretical models have posited that increases in self-injurious thoughts and behaviors (SITBs) during adolescence may be linked to failures in biological stress regulation in contexts of social stress. However, there is a lack of data examining this hypothesis during the transition to adolescence, a sensitive period of development characterized by changes across socioaffective and psychophysiological domains. Building on principles from developmental psychopathology and the RDoC framework, the present study used a longitudinal design in a sample of 147 adolescents to test whether interactions among experiences of social (i.e., parent and peer) conflict and cardiac arousal (i.e., resting heart rate) predicted adolescents’ engagement in SITBs (i.e., nonsuicidal self-injury, NSSI; and suicidal ideation; SI) across 1-year follow-up. Prospective analyses revealed that adolescents experiencing a combination of greater peer, but not family, conflict and higher cardiac arousal at baseline showed significant longitudinal increases in NSSI. In contrast, social conflict did not interact with cardiac arousal to predict future SI. Findings indicate that greater peer-related interpersonal stress in adolescents may increase risk for future NSSI among youth with physiological vulnerabilities (i.e., higher resting heart rate) that may be markers of maladaptive stress responses. Future research should examine these processes at finer timescales to elucidate whether these factors are proximal predictors of within-day SITBs.

A Swedish population‐based study to evaluate the usefulness of resting heart rate in the prediction of suicidal behavior among males

“…Though recent studies underscore the possible utility of cardiac markers to predict suicidal behavior (Adolph et al, 2018;Kang et al, 2020;Ruesch et al, 2023), very few studies have investigated the predictive role of resting heart rate. Findings suggest an association between elevated resting heart rate and nonsuicidal self-injury in adolescents (Nelson et al, 2023) as well as proximal suicide risk among patients with internalizing disorders (Lee et al, 2021). The role of high resting heart rate in suicide death (SD) has also been supported in two population cohorts from Taiwan and Norway (Chang et al, 2016).…”