By Janis Whitlock and Penelope Hasking — 2017
It's a paradox: Some students habitually hurt themselves physically to feel better emotionally. When educators understand more, they can help more.
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Nonsuicidal self-injury, often simply called self-injury, is the act of deliberately harming your own body, such as cutting or burning yourself. It's typically not meant as a suicide attempt.
We get lots of emails, especially about our articles on cutting. Sometimes people tell us about the feelings and emotions that surround cutting. Others share their ideas on how they stopped. We decided to put some of these suggestions and comments on our site.
Self-injury involves self-inflicted, non-suicidal bodily harm that is severe enough to either cause tissue damage or to leave marks that last several hours.
Self-harm is undoubtedly prevalent in our society—especially among young people. It's difficult to know just how many people engage in self-harm, but some studies have found that as many as 20 percent of high school students and 40 percent of college students have self-harmed.
Deliberately inflicting pain or injury by cutting oneself or some other form of self-mutilation seems incomprehensible to many people. But it’s a common, typically secretive, experience for about 8% of adolescents and young adults.
An estimated 2 million Americans practice some form of self-injury, and there is a common misperception that — like anorexia — the problem afflicts mostly young women. But self-mutilation isn't exclusively a modern adolescent issue.
When someone harms themselves by cutting, burning, punching, or engaging in other forms of self-injury (without intending for death to be an end goal), they’re engaging in what’s known as non-suicidal self-injury (NSSI).
This booklet aims to help you understand more about self-harm and what to do if you are worried about yourself or someone else. It explains what self-harm is, what to do if you or someone you know is self-harming, and how to get help.
These behaviors are more common than you might think with an estimated range of 6.4% to 30.8% of teens admitting to trying to harm themselves.