[Cmi-mulheres] Fwd: [NextGenderation] Girl Talk: Why We Cut and Burn Ourselves

[Isadora]

--- Nadira Omarjee <nadira em trustemail.com> wrote:
> From: "Nadira Omarjee" <nadira em trustemail.com>
> To: "NextGenderation"
> <nextgenderation em nextgenderation.net>
> Date: Mon, 19 Apr 2004 12:34:22 +0200
> Subject: [NextGenderation] Girl Talk: Why We Cut and
> Burn Ourselves
> 
> HEALTH & ENVIRONMENT
> Girl Talk: Why We Cut and Burn Ourselves
> 
> By Emma Pearse - WeNews correspondent
> 
> (WOMENSENEWS)--Corin (a pseudonym), a 19-year old
> teen from central south
> Connecticut, can remember the first time she cut
> herself. She was 15 and
> watching a Disney movie. She picked up a razor and
> sliced into the veins on
> her right foot.
> 
> "I discovered cutting by attempts at killing
> myself," Corin wrote in a
> recent e-mail to Women's eNews. "As early as seventh
> grade I had been
> slicing at my veins, with the intention of killing
> myself. I realized that
> sometimes just cutting the skin away from the vein
> made me feel better. And
> I began to do it more and more often."
> 
> Corin is one of thousands of female teens logging on
> to hard-to-locate
> Internet chat rooms. Many users keep their chat room
> addresses private or
> for use by a select few, yet some go so far as to
> create personal Web sites.
> One such site, Self Injury: A Struggle, was started
> by Gabrielle, a 19 year
> old, eager to share her experience with self injury
> "to let others know that
> they are not alone in their struggle," she writes.
> 
> "It started as an attempt on my part to contribute
> my voice and my opinions
> in the then growing awareness of self-injury," she
> writes. "To use my voice
> to say that self-injurers are valid individuals and
> that they are more than
> a label."
> 
> Although no current data exist to prove their
> hunches, analysts and
> clinicians say that the incidence of self injury,
> which consists most
> commonly of behaviors such as cutting, burning, and
> hair pulling, may be
> increasing. They point to the emergence of a culture
> in which it is
> acceptable--perhaps desirable--to talk about it.
> 
> Research from the Atlanta-based Centers for Disease
> Control and Prevention
> indicates that 1-in-4 adolescents in the United
> States thinks about suicide
> each year and by the end of high school at least
> 1-in-10 has made a suicide
> attempt. In 2000, suicide was the third leading
> cause of death among
> 15-to-24 year olds. Data from the National Institute
> of Mental Health in
> Bethesda, Md., indicate that between 1995 and 2000,
> though four times as
> many men as women died from suicide, women attempted
> suicide two-to-three
> times more often than men.
> 
> Existing research indicates that during adolescence,
> female teens are twice
> as likely as teen-age males to suffer from
> depression, often with self
> injury as a related behavior. The research also
> indicates that people born
> in the last two decades are likely to experience
> depression earlier in life
> than in previous decades.
> 
> Dr. David Fassler, a child and adolescent
> psychiatrist in Burlington, Vt.,
> warns, however, that self injury has been difficult
> to research due to its
> secretive nature.
> 
> "For many years self harm was something that kids
> kept to themselves," says
> Fassler. "Now it's something that they're more
> likely to talk about."
> 
> Particularly Female Affliction
> 
> Linda Lebelle, director of Focus Adolescent Services
> based in Salisbury,
> Md., agrees. She says that, among professionals
> working with teens, most are
> aware that cutting is a particularly female
> affliction and there is a
> growing sense that, during the past few years, more
> female teens have begun
> to call help lines to talk about hurting themselves.
> 
> "Traditionally boys are able to express anger
> outwardly more directly. Girls
> live in a much more body-focused culture," says Dr.
> Wendy Lader, clinical
> director of Safe Alternative, a hospital-based
> program in Naperville, Ill.,
> that caters exclusively to the treatment of self
> injury.
> 
> "Skin is a bulletin board," Lader says. "They're
> saying, 'Can you see how
> much pain I'm in?'"
> 
> Lader believes the behavior is increasing for
> several reasons. "A lot of
> kids are feeling very invisible these days," she
> says. "There are many
> reasons for this--higher rates of divorce, more
> isolated activities such as
> computers." Self harm makes their experience more
> visible, she adds, and
> sometimes there is the contagion effect. "Movies are
> showing beautiful girls
> who are self injuring. There is a desire to
> glamorize this."
> 
> Plenty of Cultural Attention
> 
> Last year, the movies "Secretary" and "Thirteen"
> portrayed adolescent
> females cutting and burning themselves in response
> to loneliness and family
> neglect. Sexual abuse was hinted at, but never made
> explicit. The play
> "Cut," adapted from the four-year-old book of the
> same title by Patricia
> McCormick, ran at a playhouse in Laguna Beach, Ca.
> Local newspapers have
> covered the subject and Tracey Gold's documentary,
> "Cutters: Self Abuse,"
> ran last year on the Discovery Health Channel. This
> month, one of the main
> characters on a MTV series, "The Real World, San
> Diego," Frankie, revealed a
> habit of cutting.
> 
> Whatever their cultural cues, teens who cut
> themselves are indicating a
> state of mind and perhaps a personal history--tough
> childhoods, mental
> illnesses or peer pressures--that call out for
> medical attention, says
> Lebelle, from Maryland's adolescent services. "It
> seems to be that a high
> proportion of kids who cut or self injure have
> suffered some sort of trauma:
> abuse, molestation or rape."
> 
> Both Fassler and Lader regard self harm as a symptom
> rather than a
> diagnosis.
> 
> "The goal is to get people to recognize that self
> injury is a clue," says
> Lader, the self-injury specialist. "There's some
> kind of a feeling that they
> don't want to experience. And they need to figure
> out why at that moment
> they are having that impulse. And rather than self
> medicate it with self
> injury, we want them to understand what they are
> feeling, label their
> feelings and challenge those irrational thoughts."
> 
> Impulse-Control Logs
> 
> Lader has her clients keep "impulse control logs" in
> which they track every
> time they feel an impulse to injure.
> 
> The teens who responded to a Women's eNews posting
> openly described lives of
> enormous sadness, little-understood emotions and an
> inexplicable attraction
> to the thrill of self-inflicted pain.
> 
> Corin was just one of many girls who responded to a
> posting on the Web site
> operated by Focus Adolescent Services. Teens from
> the ages of 14 to 26, from
> Colorado to Connecticut, wrote introducing
> themselves with lines such as
> "Hi, my name is Abby. I am 17 and I am a cutter."
> 
> Corin says she was sexually abused as a child and
> that she has seen
> therapists, psychiatrists and been in a hospital
> outpatient program for
> suicide attempts. She writes she is grateful not to
> have had access to
> weapons more serious than razors and Tylenol.
> 
> "All I have to say is that I am very lucky that my
> parents don't keep a gun
> in the house," she writes. "I am convinced I would
> not be here today if they
> did."
> 
> To read more postings from teens who harm
> themselves, go to
> 
> Women's eNews: - "Female Teens Discuss Their Self
> Injury": -
> http://womensenews.org/article.cfm/dyn/aid/1789
> 
> Emma Pearse writes about pop culture and women's
> issues from her home in New
> York City.
> 
> For more information:
> 
> SAFE Alternatives (Self-Abuse Finally Ends): -
> http://www.selfinjury.com
> 
> Self Injury: A Struggle: -
> http://www.self-injury.net
> 
>
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