Self Harm: Cutting Too Many Deaths Too Deep

Self harm is not generally regarded as an “epidemic”, and generally fails to receive much media coverage; unless in linkage with a suicide. We all know suicide kills people (over 800,000 people a year), but we generally have the wrong (and sometimes lethal) idea that self harm doesn't kill, and if it does; it’s only a few right?

If over 880,000 a year is a few; then yeah… Just a few. [1]

Hi everyone! We know this article comes almost immediately after our “WHO Suicide Report: Stop The Watch” (which was a hit), but we felt that we should make-up for all of our missed articles. Today we have a very interesting topic (and data) that we would like to share with you!

Self harm differs from Suicide on the basis that self harm is not an attempt to kill oneself, but instead to inflict injury and/or pain. For this reason, death resulting from self harm is not classified as a Suicide. Death is not an intended result. With this said, an increased risk for suicide applies individuals who self harm, but does not indicate a person is suicidal, or will commit suicide.  

Not all self harm is necessarily harmful, and it is often extraordinarily hard for researchers to receive accurate data. This is due to the fact that the term “self harm” can apply to an extremely broad range of activities such as pinching oneself, to much, much worse. With this in-mind, a classification system using a four tier system was established in 1988 to help better define “self harm”, which is from tiers two to four.

Courtesy of the Suicide/ Mental Health Group

On average, self harm presents itself in individuals ages 14-24[2], but has been reported in ages as young as 5. In addition individuals may participate in self-harm for various reasons. The two most common are Hyperstress and Dissociation.

Courtesy of the Suicide/ Mental Health Group

Self harm in psychology is commonly recognised as a coping mechanism that provides temporary relief of intense emotions and feelings by overriding or flooding the sensory system of the brain (see Extreme Stress on flow chart). It has also been successfully linked with emotional abuse, in which it acts as an attempt by the abused to have control over one's emotions (see dissociation on flow chart), when past (or current abuse) has resulted in a lack of “natural” control over one’s emotions. Other reasons for self harm can be incomprehensible due to their nature (self exploration by “self surgery”).

Around 80% of all self harming involves stabbing or cutting the skin with a sharp object[3] (e.g. a blade). This poses a serious risk to individuals as there is a possibility of receiving an infection, or hitting a major blood vessel. Basic human anatomy though protects most of the major blood vessels with a layer of muscle, and in parts; bone. The issue with this is that not all humans are anatomically the same, meaning that the major blood vessels may not be entirely protected, and thus open to being punctured. 

Injury to the tendons (when cutting the wrist for example) can also be suffered, causing long-term damage and chronic pain. These results though are not necessarily due to a lack of knowledge pertaining to human anatomy as individuals who plan to self harm normally acquaint themselves with the ways to “safely” cut. This links back into the fact that self harming can not be generally related to suicide with any level of accuracy. Due to this, most deaths or life-threatening injuries suffered from cutting are more likely due to a state of mental and emotional instability resulting in excess accidental injury.

Before we end off this article, we would like to add that there is also seemingly a very common belief that individuals who self-harm are looking for attention. While in some cases this may be true, due to the level of social acceptability of actions such as cutting oneself being almost entirely socially unacceptable; most self harming people will go to great length to “cover-up”. We would also like to state that those that would be labeled as “attention seekers” are also in-need of help. Cutting one’s self; no matter the reason, is a serious matter in-need of attention, and care. In addition to this, some individuals may appear to cut for very odd reasons (such as not getting the iPhone 6) and are brushed off as "stupid". To the average person, it may seem extraordinarily illogical to cut one's self for such a simple let-down. If we refer to the flowchart in this article though; and follow the path of "Hyperstress" or "Extreme Stress", it becomes apparent that there are underlying reasons for the self harm; and that the let-down (such as the iPhone) was the breaking point. All individuals have what is called a stress threshold, which normally increases with experience in high stress situations. This is why high stress occupations normally have staggered introduction stages to help "ease" individuals into attaining a high stress threshold (e.g. Paramedics mentor/ supervision period). When this threshold is crossed (and for some people it can be quite low), we enter hyperstress (too much stress). While in this state, if the one thing you are looking forward to does not happen, you normally hit your breaking point.

We hope you all learned something new and interesting from this article!

-- Suicide/ Mental Health Group

Suicide/ Mental Health Group 

Sources:
- 880,000 Stat [1] 
- Age Range [2] 
- Preferred Method [3]
*Apologies for the text size difference in the last few paragraphs... site script is kind-of weird and messing with displayed font-size*