Associated Factors of Self-injury Among Adolescents with Autism Spectrum Disorder in a Community and Residential Treatment Setting.

Flowers et al. (2020) pulled 145 charts of teens with autism.

All lived in group homes or attended day programs.

The team scored age, irritability, and daily-living skills.

They asked: which numbers flag future self-injury?

Older kids, higher irritability, and lower adaptive scores won the race.

Each one raised the odds of self-injury on its own.

No guesswork—charts already held the red flags.

Dempsey et al. (2016) tried the same kind of model and hit a wall.

Cognitive and behavior scores explained only 13 % of self-injury—far less useful.

Jacqueline’s team swapped in irritability and daily-living scores and got a working model, so the new picks beat the old ones.

Arwert et al. (2020) went further.

They split suicide talk from self-harm and found different risk lines.

Both studies agree: low adaptive skills spell trouble, but G shows you must ask if the teen talks about death or only hits themselves.

Payne et al. (2020) zoom out.

Their review says self-harm rates in autistic youth jump around.

Jacqueline’s tight focus on irritability and adaptive skill gives clinicians a fixed place to start, even if the wide world still varies.

You now have three quick flags: teen’s age, irritability score, and adaptive score.

Pull these from intake or last review.

If two or three sit in the danger zone, move the case to the top of your assessment list and add safety and skill-building goals first.