Self-injury on the rise among young people
Self-inflicted injuries appear to be on the rise, with some young people actually embedding objects in their skin. Stress may be a factor.
By Shari Roan
December 8, 2008
The revelation was shocking enough. That a growing number of teenagers and young adults deliberately embed needles, paper clips or staples in their skin may have seemed unthinkable before an Ohio radiologist presented disturbing proof at a medical meeting Wednesday.
Even more disturbing than his X-rays and accompanying report, however, could be the size and pervasiveness of the trend from which it derives — self-injury.
Cutting, burning and biting one’s body is a habit increasingly taken up by young people who find themselves simply unable to cope with stress. Embedding appears to represent a more extreme form of the disorder.
“We always saw a little bit of this, but it was in people already identified as having a psychiatric disorder,” says Janis Whitlock, a prominent researcher on self-injury at Cornell University. “What doesn’t seem to make much sense is why we’re seeing it so much in seemingly healthy kids.”
Experts who study the behavior say that 15% to 22% of all adolescents and young adults have intentionally injured themselves at least once in their lifetimes. One study of 94 girls, ages 10 to 14, found that 56% had hurt themselves at least once. It was published in February in the Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, part of a special issue devoted to self-injury.
The behavior may be building among adults as well. One study found that 1% of adults self-injure.
Illinois therapist Karen Conterio, who operates a self-injury treatment program, says 11% of her clients are age 40 and older. And surveys by Whitlock have identified self-injurers in their late 20s and 30s.
Expressing pain
The leading theory behind the behavior is that cutting, burning or hitting oneself externalizes brutal and persistent emotional pain. A poem published in a newsletter called the Cutting Edge sums up the disorder, says Ruta Mazelis, a consultant with the Sidran Institute in Baltimore, an organization that focuses on traumatic stress.
“I hurt so much
I bleed.”
— Robin et al.