Self-Injury: What Comes To Mind When Hearing This?

A fad for most teenagers; a horror to parents. Self-injury is the act of intentionally hurting oneself. Most people picture emo teenagers cutting themselves while listening to Hawthorne Heights. But what people should see is the whole aspect of self-injury, not just the ideas of it.

Self-Injuring oneself didn't start when emos wanted attention, it didn't start at cutting circles, it started a long time ago. Research on this subject was believed to start around the 1880s. Charts and classification systems were made to better understand this disorder in the 30s, yet we still have so much to learn from it.

One of the classification systems that was created in the 1930s by Menninger goes as follows:

• Neurotic - nail biters, pickers, extreme hair removal and unnecessary cosmetic surgery.
• Religious - self-flagellants and others.
• Puberty rites - hymen removal, circumcision or clitoral alteration.
• Psychotic - eye or ear removal, genital self-mutilation and extreme amputation
• Organic brain diseases - which allow repetitive head banging, hand biting, finger fracturing or eye removal.
• Conventional - nail clipping, trimming of hair and shaving beards.

Another Classification system was made by R. R. Ross and H. B. McKay. They categorized self-injurers in 9 groups: abrading, biting, burning, cutting, constricting, hitting, ingestion or inhaling, inserting, and hitting.

In these charts, they do not include age groups of self-injurers. Self-injury is common for all ages and it has also been shown that women self-injure themselves more than men. It is not certain if this is true because it is easier for men to hide their injuries or explain the injury as a result of different circumstances; maybe a sport incident? Working on the construction site and accidentally injure yourself?

Triggers for self-injury could be anything and everything. For some people, emotional distress can be a trigger. Or the way their day went could be one. Maybe even being embarrassed about something can lead to someone self-injuring themselves. Even sexual arousal is a common trigger for self-injury. It depends on the person who has the disorder.

Information on this subject has still yet to grow. Hopefully, more people get informed on what self-injury really means, and not just the more 'popular' forms of it. Most people tend to be hypocritical about self-injury and not give a care to the people and their families who suffer from this disorder. But this disorder is a metal disorder. Just like autism, phobias, bipolar disorder, dementia, OCD, and substance related disorders. It's a disorder that is not being taken seriously because of the media coverage and is slowly worsening.