The Growing Wave of Teenage Self-Injury

Jane Brody:

"I feel relieved and less anxious after I cut. The emotional pain slowly slips away into the physical pain."

"It’s a way to have control over my body because I can’t control anything else in my life."

"It expresses emotional pain or feelings that I’m unable to put into words."

"I usually feel like I have a black hole in the pit of my stomach. At least if I feel pain it’s better than nothing."

These are some of the reasons young people have given for why they deliberately and repeatedly injure their own bodies, a disturbing and hard-to-treat phenomenon that experts say is increasing among adolescents, college students and young adults.

Experts urge parents, teachers, friends and doctors to be more alert to signs of this behavior and not accept without question often spurious explanations for injuries, like “I cut myself on the countertop,” “I fell down the stairs” or "My cat scratched me."

Posted by Jim Zellmer at May 7, 2008 9:33 AM
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