by Richard Garcia // Staff Writer
Everyone in life goes through emotional hardships, and we’ve each found our own way of coping with that pain. Some use meditation, others have hobbies or sports that help them get through their days. However, some unfortunately find their comfort in physical pain, opting to harm themselves in an attempt to relieve, or distract themselves from their problems. So, March has been dedicated to raising awareness for self harm, helping people to find healthy alternative methods for themselves and their loved ones for coping with their problems.
Around 17% of people will resort to self injury according to a study performed by pubmed.org, with most incidents starting around 13.Teenagers are the most likely to resort to self harm, with collage students being the second. Unfortunately, Women seem to also be more at risk, with up to 65% of all cases being women. The worst part of all these statistics is that these are only reported cases. With such a heavy social stigma surrounding self harm, many individuals who need help are often afraid to seek it, perhaps not wanting to burden others, which feeds back into their emotional turmoil.
Carson Highschool nurse, Ms. Mary Hishinuma, offered some reasons as to why one might turn to self harm, stating, “Teenagers have so much stuff going on in their lives you know? Their becoming adults, their trying to figure out their career paths so on and so forth that many times, kids need a sense of release. So many times kids that I see aren’t into harming themselves as in they want to kill themselves, but they find a release in their tension by self mutilating, or cutting themselves… and some kids use cutting as a form of self loathing, they come from such varied backgrounds at home and stuff like that where they feel responsible for things.”
Ms.Hishinuma also presented a solution to help reduce self harm in students, suggesting, “In high schools in particular they need to have saftey places where you can go, where you can chill in the office, or you can color, or you can listen to music, or you can use any of the adaptive coping mechanisms, as opposed to internalizing it… The key here is to have preventative types of things.”
The first step, and the most important toward reducing Self Harm is to attempt to alleviate the social stigma surrounding it. Many people are afraid to speak up about their problems, worrying that others will see them as a burden, or think down on them for not “ sucking it up”. The only way we can get the people help finding healthy coping mechanisms is if they’re comfortable speaking up about their self injury, and our current social mentality makes speaking up a daunting task.
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