Does Body Regard Moderate the Relationship between Non-Suicidal Self-Injury and Emotion Dysregulation in an Adolescent Sample?

Non-suicidal self-injury (NSSI) is primarily thought to serve a regulatory function (Klonsky, 2007b, 2009; Nock, 2009), with emotion dysregulation implicated as a principal component in its development (Adrian et al., 2011; Andover & Morris, 2014; Gratz, 2007; Robinson et al., 2019; Wolff et al., 2019). When engaging in NSSI, the body becomes the target for affect regulation (Cross, 1993; Ross et al., 2009), and individuals act against the human instinct to self-preserve, prompting researchers to assess the relationship between body regard and NSSI.

Body regard has emerged as a moderator of the relationship between NSSI and emotion dysregulation (Muehlenkamp et al., 2013). However, research is yet to test this moderation model in adolescent samples who are vulnerable to body image concerns (O’Dea, 2012), emotion dysregulation (Coe-Odess et al., 2019; Silvers, 2022) and NSSI (Plener et al., 2015). I used a sample of New Zealand adolescents to investigate the potential moderating role of body regard in the relationship between emotion dysregulation and NSSI. First, I assessed the psychometric properties of the Body Regard Scale (BRS; Muehlenkamp, 2012) in the current adolescent sample, establishing a 4-factor structure for use in Study Two. Study Two used hierarchical multiple regression to assess whether body regard (and its subscales) moderated the relationship between NSSI and emotion dysregulation. Consistent with my hypothesis and previous research, increasing body regard (as well as body satisfaction/acceptance, body connection and body attentiveness/care) was associated with a decrease in the strength of the association between emotion dysregulation and NSSI. However, the body competence subscale was not a significant moderator. The relationship between body regard and NSSI was not dependent on gender, also supporting my hypothesis. The research highlights body regard should be considered in etiological models of NSSI to inform treatment. Longitudinal research is needed to assess the causal role of body regard in the development of NSSI.