The Effect of Eight Weeks of Aerobic Exercise on Self-Harm Symptoms in Adolescent Girls in Karaj

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to examine the effect of eight weeks of aerobic exercise on self-harm symptoms in adolescent girls. The method of the present study is applied in nature and is quasi-experimental with pretest-posttest and a control group. The data were collected in the field, and the statistical population of the study includes all ninth grade female students in the first half of 2018 in city of Karaj. These included thirty female adolescent students who had high symptoms of self-harm and a history of self-harm. With the cooperation of researchers, counselors and school teachersthe subjects were selected from 3 selected schools in one of the cities of the province as a convenience and purposive sample and the subjects were randomly divided into two experimental (15 people) and control groups (15 people). The instrument was included a demographic questionnaire, a 22-item self-harm inventory (Shi) (Sansone, Wiederman 1998). The experimental group participated in the aerobic exercise protocol for 8 weeks (three one-hour sessions per week). The results of two-way analysis of variance showed that eight weeks of aerobic exercise had no significant effect on self-harm in adolescent girls (P=0.153). However, it led to a significant reduction in the number of adolescent girls’ self-harm (P=0.010). Therefore, we conclude that aerobic exercise can reduce the frequency of self-harm in adolescent girls.

Keywords

• aerobic
• physical activity
• self-harm
• masochism
• adolescents