Negative life events and college freshmen self-injury behavior: A moderated mediation model

To explore the impact mechanism of negative life events on self-injury behavior we recruited 695 Chinese college freshmen to complete the Adolescent Life Events Scale, the Adolescent Basic Psychological Needs Scale, the Regulatory Emotional Self-Efficacy Scale, and the Adolescents’ Self-Harm Scale. The results showed a significant positive association between negative life events and the self-injury behavior of college freshmen. Mediation effects analysis showed that basic psychological needs mediated the relationship between negative life events and the self-injury behavior of college freshmen. A moderated mediation analysis showed that regulatory emotional self-efficacy moderated the direct and indirect mediation processes. These findings suggest that the self-injurious behavior of college freshmen can be effectively reduced by meeting their basic psychological needs and by improving their regulatory emotional self-efficacy, thus helping them adjust to college life.