Ronn said: > ATLANTA (AP) --Adolescents show up at hospital emergency rooms with > self-inflicted injuries -- usually suicide attempts -- more often than > any other age group, the government said Thursday.
It should be noted that although (perhaps) most of the self-inflicted injuries treated at emergency rooms are from suicide attempts (although it seems to me that there's a real risk of misdiagnosis by ill-informed ER staff), the vast majority of self-inflicted injuries in the general population are not. It is much more common to inflict injuries on oneself to dissipate powerful emotions that the injurer has not learned to deal with in other ways. Some estimates suggest that as many as one in five female undergraduates injure themselves with this motive, and it seems that around 1% of the general population engages in repetitive self-injurious behaviour to modify emotional states. The CNN article is also incorrect in its suggestion that most non-lethal self-injury is attention seeking, as, in my experience, most people who self-injure go to some lengths to keep their behaviour secret. One friend who cuts herself managed to cover her forearms with small razor cuts roughly once a week for four or five years before anyone else learned that she was doing so. My conversations with other friends who cut or burn themselves suggest that such secrecy is typical. Indeed, several of them are horrified at the idea that their self-injurious behaviour might become common knowledge. There's lots more information on this type of self-injury at http://www.palace.net/~llama/psych/injury.html Rich
