Cutting through the pain: They look like cat scratches, but these nicks on the skin come from razor blades, pocketknives or the plastic utensils picked up in fast-food restaurants. Sometimes, they're raw marks brought on by such furious rubbing of an eraser that the skin wears off. Paper clips, unbent, transform into stabbing instruments. Cigarette lighters scorch concealed flesh.
It's called self-injury or ?cutting,? and almost every Tristate teen knows it's not about skipping class. [...] Officials at Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center ? where there are more evaluations for psychiatric emergencies per year than at any other children's hospital in the country ? say roughly 20 percent of their 3,600 cases annually show some type of self-mutilating behavior. That could include burning or other types of self-mutilation, but cutting is the most common.
What on earth is going on in this country that self-mutiliation is now the fastest growing juvenile psychiatric disorder?
I can understand that to some extent, it's a symptom of teenagers not getting the counseling they need ... but why do so many more teenagers need counseling these days?
I should imagine, given that "boys direct their emotions toward others, girls turn their feelings inward", there ought to be an equally sharp and commensurate rise in bullying and physical violence by boys. Which would be largely disguised because bullying and physical violence are by and large expected of boys.
Posted by iain at July 29, 2002 05:35 PMComments
