Abstract

This study explores the difference in psychological characteristics and self-harm behaviors frequency in group types after classifying group types according to major psychological characteristics of high school adolescents. For this purpose, data on high school students’ psychological characteristics were collected from 863 high schools nationwide and latent profile analysis was conducted. The difference in psychological characteristics and self-harm behavior frequency was confirmed through a one-way ANOVA based on the profile. The analysis results are as follows. First, high school adolescents could be classified into a total of five groups: risk, semi-risk, emotional dysregulation, mild level, and normal. Second, the differences in the frequency of self-harm behaviors between the latent groups were significant. Third, the gender ratio showed a significant difference according to the group. Based on these results, the significance of this study, its implications in counseling practice, and suggestions for future studies were discussed.