Self-Injury and Cutting
ASKED by Veronica on June 7, 2008 - 6:27pm
After seeing the post on the bodily injury through amputation: http://empowher.com/share/self-amputation/body-integrity-identity-disord...
it reminded me of a group of students in my class (when I was in high school) that cut themselves on purpose! It almost sounded like a "cool fad" to "cut".
Have you heard of this? Why would someone do that to themselves, beyond obviously trying to get attention? We weren't friends or anything, so I didn't do anything...should I have done something?
Comments
I have heard of this, and I'm glad you are asking, as the students who are "cutting" and acting out in other self-mutilating ways do need some attention...by a helpful adult.
Here is what I found about self-injury, from the Academy of American Child & Adolescent Psychiatry (http://aacap.org):
"Self-injury is the act of deliberately destroying body tissue, at times to change a way the person is feeling. Some forms may include:
* carving
* scratching
* branding
* marking
* picking, and pulling skin and hair
* burning/abrasions
* cutting
* biting
* head banging
* bruising
* hitting
* tattooing
* excessive body piercing
Some adolescents may self-mutilate to take risks, rebel, reject their parents' values, state their individuality or merely be accepted. Others, however, may injure themselves out of desperation or anger to seek attention, to show their hopelessness and worthlessness, or because they have suicidal thoughts. These children may suffer from serious psychiatric problems".
Since we are talking about a a situation in the past, no need to revisit "what should have been done", but if anyone is encountering this presently, it is a good idea to talk with a school counselor or trusted teacher about what you are seeing. As stated above, it could be a wide variety of reasons, and if you are friends with the person, you could ask them simply "why are you cutting?" They may say that it feels good or go into other explanation, and having a few resources handy can help them.
Has anyone else experienced cutting either themselves or through a friend?
There is another disease where people actually amputate their limbs and its called Body Integrity Disorder (BIID) which is a:
Psychological condition in which the individual requests an elective amputation. Individuals with this condition experience the persistent desire to have their body physically match the idealized image they have of themselves. This desire forces individuals to deal with the paradox of losing one or more major limbs (i.e. arm[s] or leg[s]) to become whole. In their minds, "Less is more".
These individuals are not psychotic. In fact, a diagnosis of psychosis
Here is the official web site is any one wishes to gather more information.
http://www.biid.org/
You may want to check out the NPR.org web site. I was listening to guy talking this week about studying people who self mutilated & self cannibalized (yuck!). He said that these people actually had a genetic deficiency that made them that way & that these people acted as though they had no control over what their body was doing.
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