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Teens and Cutting

There is new research released today by the American Academy of Pediatrics on self-mutilation among students--where they literally harm themselves, mostly because they are hurting psychologically.

It if weren’t such a large, random study, the numbers would be unbelievable. But this is a huge study, and the results should be a wake-up call to all parents, and to kids also.

Now, it almost doesn’t make sense at first: taking a knife to your own arm, and cutting yourself. “It is something that you can’t understand it unless you have done it. It started in about ninth grade probably. I think I actually saw it on TV and that is how I got the idea,” recalls 21 year-old Kassie.

It’s called cutting—a now common form of self-injury behavior…behavior that has, apparently, become rampant among teens and college students like Kassie.

The new research out shows among more than 3000 college and graduate students surveyed, three out of every four--75%--.performed at least one episode of self-injury.

Of these, almost a quarter of them reported doing it more than once.

Therapist Meg Maginn who specializes in eating disorders which are often seen along side other forms of self-harm, says, “They can cut with paper clips, knives, they can burn themselves, that is very common, sometimes they will heat up a nail and burn themselves or a they can take a cigarette and put it into the skin.”

Kassie remembers, “I started basically with paper clips when I was really depressed, I started to superficially cut until I saw enough blood, and I would do it a couple of times, more than six or seven times or so to make scars. At first it was just the pain and then it started it to become I need to see more blood, I need do see more damage.”

But the question is, why do it? What’s the motivation?

“They have the deepest routed issues, a lot of severe abuse, physical, sexual abuse. A lot of times people come in and they are not really aware of all the emotional pain they are in, because in truth what they are doing is numbing the pain,” says Maginn.

Kassie says, it helps define emotions. “Depression is such an abstract feeling, it makes you feel like you are someone else or you are not really a part of what you are going through, so to hurt yourself on the outside while you are hurting so bad on the inside just kind of makes you feel something real, the pain is real, the blood is real, and doing it to yourself is the biggest part about it, being able to make yourself feel something concrete instead of abstract.”

Kassie struggled for years, but with therapy and antidepressants, finally the cutting stopped.

“It took a lot for me to put down a knife and be able to go and talk to one of my friends and call my counselor at 4’o clock in the morning and tell her I needed help, that was the first step in it, and now I cant see myself sitting there and hurting myself anymore, I have gone past the point, I started to love myself and appreciate myself where I didn’t before. I am in a much better place,” says Kassie.

Kassie is not ashamed to discuss this in public, she says. Her viewpoint: if she can help one person out there, then this was worth it. Sadly, the study also found only one in five self-injurers sought help from a mental health professional.

For parents, the therapist says don’t take a chance this is a fad if you discover your child doing this, get help right away, she says, better safe than sorry.

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