Non-suicidal self-injury (NSSI) has emerged as a significant psychiatric issue among youth. In addition to its high
prevalence rates, NSSI is associated with a number of psychiatric issues and confers risk for varying degrees of physical
injury. It is also a risk factor for attempted suicide. Thus, youth who engage in NSSI represent a vulnerable and high risk population and researchers are likely to encounter a variety of ethical challenges when conducting NSSI research.
Accordingly, it is critical that researchers be familiar with the major ethical issues involved in NSSI research and how to
effectively account for and address them. This is important both prior to obtaining clearance from their Institutional
Review Boards and when carrying out their research. To date, there is no consolidated resource to delineate the ethi‑
cal challenges inherent to NSSI research and how these can be effectively navigated throughout the research process.
The goals of this paper are to review international best practices in NSSI research across the various contexts within
which it is studied, to offer guidelines for managing these issues, to identify areas in which variation in approaches
prohibits decisive recommendations, and to generate questions in need of further consideration among scholars in
this field.