The term ‘cutting’ refers to the widespread practice of cutting yourself with a sharp object with the purpose of injuring and scaring the skin. Although it is not much talked about in the media, this form of self harm has a growing following within the teenage population, especially girls. It is also alarming that tweens are beginning to participate in this practice as they face growing pressures in the world around them.
Teenagers who cut themselves say it helps them stay in control or relieve tension. It is often associated with depression, anxiety, binge eating and emotional issues but research has shown it does not usually lead to suicide among teenagers.
Most commonly done by children and early teenagers cutting is hidden in our society. Those who cut conceal their personal pain both physical and emotional.
Australian author Maggie Hamilton has written “What’s happening to our Girls?” this book covers many issues and discusses how our teenagers are overstimulated, oversold and oversexed. In the book she talks about cutting and says “as the self-hatred in girls grows, so too do the ways in which they express it. The number of girls who resort to self-injury has increased so much that cutting has been labeled the new anorexia. It is hard to know how many girls are cutting themselves because they do so in secret, it is now estimated that one in ten now do so.”
She goes on to give very important advice on how to help these teenagers “one of the most important messages girls need is that no-one copes all the time, and that they are not alone.”
In the USA a working party has been urging the American Psychiatric Association to elevate cutting from a symptom to a disorder in its own right, which would be called non-suicidal self injury. This new disorder would then be included in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders which is used widely by doctors throughout the USA.
Writer Helen Splarn. Editor Dr Ramesh Manocha
Source: www.npr.org
Read more here
As I see you are dealing with statistical research: I have put one of the most comprehensive link lists for hundreds of thousands of statistical sources and indicators on my blog: Statistics Reference List. And what I find most fascinating is how data can be visualised nowadays with the graphical computing power of modern PCs, as in many of the dozens of examples in these Data Visualisation References. If you miss anything that I might be able to find for you or if you yourself want to share a resource, please leave a comment.
As the mother of a cutter, I welcome addition attention and focus on the problem. However, I remain concerned that it is possibly to be categorized as “non-suicidal cutting”. It is not just a “girl” problem, though girls predominate the statistics. And for the record, the problem with my son was definitely exacerbated by suicidal tendencies. The level and aggression of his cutting was a definite indicator of how close to the edge he was suicidally.
I have read Australian research performed in the wake of a suicide at an all boys’ school which did correlate cutting as the most telling sign of impending suicidal behaviour in future by boys. Maybe researchers want to open their parameters here a bit and consider that the behaviour in boys and girls may differ, in the same way that attempts vs successful completion varies between girls and boys.
My own message is that cutting behaviour in boys need to be taken very seriously. The violence of the behaviour, and the likelihood of suicide, may well be greater in young males than young females.