TY - JOUR T1 - The association between internet addiction and self-injurious behaviour among adolescents JF - Injury Prevention JO - Inj Prev SP - 403 LP - 408 DO - 10.1136/ip.2009.021949 VL - 15 IS - 6 AU - L T Lam AU - Z Peng AU - J Mai AU - J Jing Y1 - 2009/12/01 UR - http://injuryprevention.bmj.com/content/15/6/403.abstract N2 - Objective: To examine the association between internet addiction and self-injurious behaviour (SIB) in adolescence.Methods: Population-based cross-sectional survey of 1618 high school students aged 13ā€“18 years in Guangzhou city, Guangdong Province, PR China. Deliberate SIB was measured using self-reported questionnaire; internet addiction was assessed using the Internet Addiction Test (IAT).Results: 263 (16.3%) participants reported having committed some form of SIB in the past 6 months. 73 (4.5%) had committed SIB 6 times or more, and 157 (9.7%) 1ā€“5 times. The majority of respondents were classified as normal users of the internet (nā€Š=ā€Š1392, 89.2%), with 158 (10.2%) moderately and 10 (0.6%) severely addicted to the internet. After adjusting for potential confounders, the odds ratio for SIB was 2.0 (95% CI 1.1 to 3.7) for those who were classified as moderately and severely addicted to the internet when compared to the normal group.Conclusions: SIB is common in adolescence in the study population in China. Addiction to the internet is detrimental to mental health and increases the risk of self-injury among adolescents. Clinicians need to be aware of potential co-morbidities of other addictions among adolescent self-injured patients. ER -