Self Harm Research Paper

As a preteen, I witnessed my sister committing harm to herself and mutilating her own body. Self-harm, otherwise known as self-mutilation, means a person intentionally injures themselves, through either cutting, burning, or intentionally ingesting harmful substances, without suicidal intent. My sister, Amelia, purposely cut and burned her own flesh throughout her early teenage years and into her early twenties. Many reasons or events may cause an individual to self-injure. Some of these reasons are as follows: a need to feel a physical pain in order to alleviate a deeper emotional pain, self-punishment, being a victim to bullying, addiction, or a mental disorder. Statistics reported by the National Suicide Research Foundation show that self-harm is the most popular among women between the ages of 15 and 19 (“Incident”). As if that is not enough of a scare, medical researchers, Stephen Lewis and Nancy Heath reported, “Between 14% and 21% of youth and young adults have engaged in non-suicidal self-injury at least once, about 25% of whom having done so repetitively”

This seems to happen during early to mid-teen years. Bullying can be in the form of physical abuse, emotional abuse, or through online dialogue, otherwise known as cyberbullying. Bullying is also linked to a high number of suicides, but not as high for self-harming. That may be the case however, it does still happen and it is still too high. The British Medical Journal published a study, done by researchers and psychologists, to test the link between bullying and self-injuring. They tested 2,141 children aged around 12. The test was supposed to be able to identify if an adolescent is bullied, how likely the adolescent is to try to hurt himself. Out of the 2,141 children, 2.9% (62) self-harmed and of those 56% (35), that is more than half, were frequently bullied. Thirty-two of the thirty-five were girls (Fisher et