Self-Injury or Cutting

What is self-injury or cutting?
What kinds of people self-injure?
Why do people self-injure?
How can someone who self-injures get help?

What is Self-Injury or Cutting?

Self injury can include things like:

• eating disorders
• drug use
• alchohol use
• burning
• picking scabs
• pulling your own hair
• banging your head
• punching walls
• hurting your body in any way

Cutting is a form of self-injury where people hurt their body by cutting themselves.

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What kinds of people self-injure?

Self-injury is more common than people realize, especially among teens and can affect teens from every socio-economic, ethnic and religious background. As people who injure themselves are usually very good at hiding the results or explaining them away, there's no certain type of person that is most likely to self-injure.

With that being the case, self injury is used more often by girls in part because guys tend to use more “acceptable” forms of self-injury like punching walls. Girls are generally not socialized to express their violence externally and as a result when some girls are faced with tension, pain, or any intolerable feeling, they take it out on themselves.

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Why do people self-injure?

Self-injury is something that people use to cope with probelms in their lives that they don't know how to deal with in healthier ways.

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How can someone who self-injures get help?

For help with self-injury and cutting, contact the Daly City Youth Health Center at (650) 985-7000 and ask to speak to a counselor.

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