Self-Harm

Self-harm is a growing and troubling trend. It’s a frightening disorder, in which an individual who feels hurt and/ or alienated, expresses their feeling through injuring oneself. ‘‘ [Self-mutilation is] without any conscious suicidal intent’’. As said by Whitlock: ‘‘Self-harm is a [severely] overlooked public health issue’’ (Whitlock, 2011). On the other hand suicide is the act of intentionally causing death to oneself. Compared to the other centuries these two issues have sparked a major epidemic in the twentieth-first century for several reasons. Recently, this problem has been rapidly gaining popularity amongst teens. The main goal of this paper is to outline: the individuals at high risk, causes, effects, prevention and

Janis Whitlock at the Cornell University, had the purpose of investigating how common self-mutilation was amongst college students. In the terms of this experiment self harm was defined as self inflicted destruction of body tissues, without suicide intent. Whitlock conducted the first large survey-based study of self-injury on adolescence. In the U.S., a web-based survey was given to the students of two US Colleges. Out of the 11,529 students that responded: 15.3 % reported self-abusing in the past, 6.8% had confessed to self injuring within the past year, and 86.45 % have done some form of self-mutilation in their life. The average starting age for self injuring in this study was 15.2 years. In 2011 Whitlock and his colleagues conducted an experiment that showed the correlation between suicide and self harming. It was to be concluded that 40% of self harmers will try or have tried to commit suicide at least once in their life

Self-harm may, or may not lead to suicide, it solely depends on the severity of the case and the individual at risk. One significant difference between suicide and self-harm is intent. A suicidal person sees their situation as ‘‘a permanent roadblock’’, while self-harmers see their situation as ‘‘ temporary blocking stone’’. The main difference is that suicidal victims end up ending their life, while self-harmers end up abusing themselves to deal with their situation. In entirety both conditions are terrible, but self-mutilation is slightly better in comparison to suicide. Studies have shown that individuals who self-harm have a complete understanding of life and how it works, they just don't understand how to cope with the stress that life comes with. This is an easier situation to deal with, in comparison to someone who doesn't see living as worth it anymore. In return repeatedly self harming can drive an individual to get addicted to the sensation of self-harming. Studies have shown that repeated self-harm could have some dangerous side effects. When an individual gets injured the brain releases dopamine, happiness hormone to compensate for the pain. This feeling of momentary happiness then becomes a temporary distraction for the self-harmer, therefore making the self harmer addictive to self-injury in order to get a repeated