Adolescent Girls - Depression, Stress, and Cutting
By Curtis Reed
Cutting is a stress reliever in which teens dealing with depression purposely injure themselves by using a sharp object to scratch or cut their skin deep enough to draw blood. It's a type of self-injury behavior typically seen more often among younger adolescent girls, although older teens and boys can also engage in cutting. Typically, adolescent girls will cut themselves in places where their injuries and scars can be concealed by clothing to hide the practice from parents, siblings, and teachers.
Adolescent girls who cut don't intend to injure themselves seriously or permanently. While teens who cut do sometimes attempt suicide, cutting episodes are usually not suicide attempts, experts say. Rather, adolescent girls who cut are feeling emotional pain and resort to physical self-injury in an attempt to feel better. Cutting releases endorphins, the brain's feel-good chemical, providing a respite from the pain or helping the teen "feel more alive."
Signs of Cutting and Self-Harm
Self-harm includes anything you do to intentionally injure yourself. More common ways of self-harm in adolescent girls include the cutting or severely scratching of their skin, burning or scalding themselves, hitting themselves or banging their head, punching things or throwing their body against walls and hard objects, sticking objects into their skin, intentionally preventing wounds from healing, and swallowing poisonous substances or inappropriate objects.
Self-harm can also include less obvious ways of hurting oneself or putting oneself in danger, such as driving recklessly, binge drinking, taking too many drugs, and having unsafe sex. If you are the parent or loved one of an adolescent girl who is cutting or harming herself in any way please contact MasterNet today and get your loved one the help that she needs. Our professionals at Therapy Insider specialize in finding treatment for adolescents and young adults that deal with numerous behavioral and mental health issues.