Girls’ tattoos: their significance for suicidological practice

Tattoo is the process of applying a permanent (lasting, constant) drawing to the body. There is an opinion that people who want to get a tattoo, have more self-doubts, are prone to deep introspection, have a fanciful worldview. This means that the tattoo itself is an indicator of personal disharmony that can possibly be connected with auto-aggressive traits and aspirations of the person. There are opposing opinions as well. Today, there is no clear idea of the connection between the phenomenon of auto-aggression and tattooing. Whether it is a harmless behavioral pattern or behavior that basically has certain causes that are significant for suicidalogical practice requires in-depth study. The purpose o f the s t ud y : to study suicidological profiles of tattooed individuals. The main objective of the study is to test the hypothesis of the relationship between having tattoos and a tendency to aggressive behavior, to understand if they have any suicide prediction value. Materials and methods. 30 girls with at least one tattoo on their body were examined (mean age - 21.07±2.1 years). A representative group with similar age and socio-demographic characteristics was used as control. As a diagnostic tool, a questionnaire to identify auto-aggressive patterns and their predictors in the past and present was used, as well as the following tests: MiniMult, STAXI, The Drego Injunction Scale (Russian version). Mathematical data processing was performed using the SPSS-Statistics V26 program. Results and discussion. The data obtained allow us to ascertain the high auto-aggressive activity of the studied group: an attempt was noted in every fourth (26.67%), every other individual had the history of suicidal thoughts 53.33% (in the control group, respectively - 6.25% and 17.19%). Significantly more often they reported depressive episodes (70%), hopelessness (60%), obsessive shame (36.6%), used drugs (33.3%), were prone to risky modes of behavior. Conclusions. We have to admit that having a tattoo is closely associated with a high risk of detecting auto-aggressive patterns in girls, both suicidal and non-suicidal. The data described above are consistent with the frequency of detection in the study group of important predictors of suicidal behavior and a specific set of psychological characteristics. The data obtained expand our understanding of the relationship between the phenomena of autoaggression and tattoos.