La conducta autolesiva y su relación con la autoestima en adolescentes

Abstract

Introduction: Adolescents go through a vulnerable stage, full of fluctuations throughout their evolutionary cycle, which, if they do not pay enough attention, trigger a series of abrupt changes in their process, such as self-injury and decreased self-esteem, which directly affect their physical and psychological integrity. Self-injurious behavior is the self-inflicted damage that adolescents inflict on their bodies, and self-esteem is the set of self-concept and confidence that allows them to have a full life. The objective of the study was to analyze the relationship be tween the level of self-injurious behaviors and the level of self-esteem in adolescents of the "Oxford" Educational Unit through a quantitative, non-experimental, correlational and cross-sectional study on a sample of 158 students from 12 to 16 years old (48% males and 52% females) from the Salcedo canton, chosen by convenience and simple random sampling to whom the psychometric instruments wereapplied: Carlos Francisco Castillo Meléndez's AEAS Self-Injury Scale and Rosemberg's Self- Esteem Scale. The results showed the presence of a low level of self-injurious behaviors in 39.2% of the adolescents, while 53.8% showed a medium level of self-esteem. The Spearman correlation coefficient showed the existence of a statistically significant correlation (Rho= -0.243 p < 0.05) between the variable of self-injurious behaviors and self-esteem in the adolescents in the present study