Investigation of the role of resistance in non-suicidal self-harm

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The following is a summary of “Resilience revisited: a systematic review and synthesis of the self-harm (NSSI) and its relationship to resilience”, which was published in May 2025 BMC psychiatry by Weedage et al.

Resilience was identified as a critical area for further investigations in the context of non -suicidal self -harm (NSSI), whereby the conceptual conceptualizations of individually -oriented psychological resilience develop into a dynamic, interactive process with biological, psychological, social and ecological systems.

The researchers carried out a retrospective study to analyze the relationship between NSSI and resilience.

They carried out a systematic review by searching PubMed, Psycinfo, the Cochrane Library and the Web of Science for Studies on the relationship between NSSI and resilience. The review follows the preferred reporting points for the guidelines for meta -analysis and meta -analysis (prism). In addition, the size of this relationship was determined by calculating a random effect size using the meta package by R.

The results showed that 17 studies with a total sample size of 12,273 participants were included (M._Old= 17.56, area: 12.93–27.50, SD = 3.95; Female: 59.5%) and 4,767 participants (38.8%) in the NSSI sample. The pooled analysis showed a small to moderate relationship between resilience and NSSI with a model effect size of 0.28 (95% CI: 0.10; 0.47). Higher values ​​or the presence of NSSI were associated with a lower level of resistance. Most studies evaluated psychological resilience. In several studies, the resilience reported as a moderator and mediator, with a higher resilience reducing the probability of an NSSI in response to stressful or traumatic events. Some studies reported on effect sizes for resilience factors, which mainly focused on problem solving/coping and emotional reactivity.

The investigators came to the conclusion that resilience is related to NSSI, but emphasized the need for a holistic, multimodal approach in order to better understand the resistance within the non -linear recovery process, including perspectives of people with lived experience.

Source: bmcpsychiatry.biomedCentral.com/articles/10.1186/S1288-025-06868-3