Self-injury on the rise among young people
The revelation was shocking enough. That a growing number of teenagers and young adults deliberately embed needles, paper clips or staples in their skin may have seemed unthinkable before an Ohio radiologist presented disturbing proof at a medical meeting Wednesday.
Even more disturbing than his X-rays and accompanying report, however, could be the size and pervasiveness of the trend from which it derives -- self-injury.
Cutting, burning and biting one's body is a habit increasingly taken up by young people who find themselves simply unable to cope with stress. Embedding appears to represent a more extreme form of the disorder.
"We always saw a little bit of this, but it was in people already identified as having a psychiatric disorder," says Janis Whitlock, a prominent researcher on self-injury at Cornell University. "What doesn't seem to make much sense is why we're seeing it so much in seemingly healthy kids."
Experts who study the behavior say that 15% to 22% of all adolescents and young adults have intentionally injured themselves at least once in their lifetimes. One study of 94 girls, ages 10 to 14, found that 56% had hurt themselves at least once. It was published in February in the Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, part of a special issue devoted to self-injury.
The behavior may be building among adults as well. One study found that 1% of adults self-injure.
Illinois therapist Karen Conterio, who operates a self-injury treatment program, says 11% of her clients are age 40 and older. And surveys by Whitlock have identified self-injurers in their late 20s and 30s.
Many questions remain about why some people feel compelled to hurt themselves -- and what can be done to help them. The current edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Psychiatric Disorders, the professional encyclopedia on mental illness, barely mentions self-injury.
The Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology's self-injury issue calls the problem "remarkably prevalent and woefully understudied." Prevention and treatment programs backed by scientific studies are virtually nonexistent.
But work has begun on a new edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual, which will be published in 2012, and at least two committees are addressing self-injury for inclusion in the text.
"In the last few years there has been an explosion of research, but it's still in its infancy," Whitlock says. "There is so much more we need to know."
