Adolescents and self-cutting (self-harm): Information for parents

              N EW
M E X ICO STA
E
UNIVERSI TY
T
®
Cooperative Extension Service • College of Agriculture and Home Economics
To find more resources for your business, home or family, visit the College of Agriculture and Home Economics on the
World Wide Web at www.cahe.nmsu.edu
Adolescents and Self-Cutting
(Self-Harm): Information for Parents1
Guide I-104
Bruce Jacobs, Ph.D.
Extension Health Specialist
This publication is scheduled to be updated and reissued 6/10.
Self-cutting is a form of intentional self-injury and self-muti-lation,
without the intent of suicide. Cutting is done with
sharp objects such as razors, knives, pins/needles, sharp stones
and broken glass. However, when these types of items aren’t
available, those who cut themselves will use other objects to
break skin, e.g., pencil erasers (through hard rubbing). Com-mon
body sites cut include arms, wrists, ankles and lower
legs. Other, more hidden sites, may include the abdomen,
inner thighs, feet, genitals and under the arms or breasts.
Cutting and the marks it leaves are usually kept well hidden
so the behavior can continue without interference.
Self-cutting is not a new phenomenon, but it appears to be
growing in frequency. While both adults and youth, and both
males and females, intentionally cut themselves, cutting is most
prevalent among adolescent girls. Cutting is the most common
method of self-injury and is often done repetitively, that is, not
just as a one-time occurrence. There are also other methods
used to self-mutilate such as deep scratching (which draws
blood), pinching, skin burning, punching oneself or objects,
biting oneself, scalding hot showers, hair pulling, and interfer-ing
with the healing of wounds such as picking at scabs.
While there is a lack of research for determining specifically
how prevalent self-mutilation is among adolescents in the gen-eral
population, one study (Ross and Health, 2002) involving
440 high school students found that nearly 14% (14 out of 100
students) reported engaging in self-mutilative behavior. In re-gard
to the age that students started the self-mutilation:
• about 12% reported during 9th grade,
• 59% reported during 7th and/or 8th grade,
• about 25% reported during 6th grade or earlier,
• about 5% reported they did not remember when they started.
Girls reported higher rates of self-mutilation than boys
(64% girls vs. 36% boys) in the study. Sixteen percent of
these students reported using more than one method of self-mutilation.
Cutting was found to be the most common
means to self-mutilate.
Why are Adolescents Intentionally
Cutting Themselves?
Whereas earlier research into the occurrence of self-mutilation
documented cutting among adolescents who were schizo-phrenic,
severely depressed, chemically dependent, incarcer-ated
or had a history of abuse, the increase of cutting occur-ring
in the adolescent population is among young people
without these factors.
Cutting is done primarily as a means to cope with painful
emotions. In the study previously discussed (Ross and Health,
2002), adolescents who self-mutilated had higher measures
for anxiety and depression than their peers who did not self-mutilate.
A majority of the students who self-mutilated de-scribed
their feelings before and during self-mutilation with
words like “lonely,” “sad,” and “alone.” The person who cuts
will do so in order to escape from feeling trapped in an intol-erable
psychological and emotional situation that they can’t
control or cope with. Cutting provides temporary relief from
anxiety and agitation, or provides stimulation out of
“downer” states such as depression, emotional numbness,
hopelessness and apathy toward life. Also reported is a feeling
of gaining some sense of control over one’s situation. While
the anxious and depressive mental and emotional states can’t
be coped with or controlled, cutting provides an immediate –
but unhealthy – means of control, since it provides a tempo-rary
escape from anxious or depressive thoughts and feelings.
Cutting has been recognized as having an addictive qual-ity;
that is, there’s an overwhelming preoccupation with the
relief experienced after a cutting incident. Some researchers
theorize that the person who cuts may also have a continued
desire to experience the body’s natural “feel good” chemicals
– called endorphins -– which are released during cutting. The
endorphins produce a natural “high” feeling.
While cutting is primarily done for the reasons previously
discussed, adolescents also cut themselves because they hear of
or see peers, including friends, who cut themselves. This is
called the “contagion” factor. Just as behaviors such as drug
1Reviewed by Robert Del Campo, Ph.D., Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist and Professor, Department of Family and Consumer Sciences and by
Diana S. Del Campo, Ph.D., Extension Child Development and Family Life Specialist.