Identifying the risk of deliberate self-harm among young prisoners by means of coping typologies

Self-harming behavior during incarceration has been a topic of increasing attention in recent years. Some authors attribute these episodes to the high level of stress that imprisonment generates coupled with a low quality of coping strategies employed by inmates. The main aim of this study was to identify, by means of coping typologies, prisoners at higher risk of self-harming behavior. The results highlighted the fact that coping typologies permitted the classification of inmates into four groups and the identification of those at lower and higher risk of self-harming. The group at greater risk was the one that used more avoidance and less approach coping.