Non Suicidal Self-Injury Research Paper

Non-Suicidal self-injury (NSSI) refers to “a variety of behaviors in which an individual intentionally inflicts harm to his or her body for purposes not socially recognized or sanctioned and without suicidal intent” (Whitlock, 2010). It includes actions such as the intentional cutting, scratching, burning, punching, and embedding of objects under the skin. Self-injury is often used as a coping method for extreme emotions, or when experiencing emotional numbness . As a result, self-injury is most common in people who are highly sensitive to emotion and experience difficulty when handling negative feelings (Whitlock, 2010). Because of the immense amount of stigma surrounding mental health issues today, the idea of injuring oneself as a coping
This belief isn’t necessarily wrong, but it is extremely harmful to how we perceive and handle it. On one hand, self-injury is often an extremely private act where people put a significant amount of effort into hiding it: wearing uncomfortably warm clothing in the summer and avoiding activities that require less body coverage, such as swimming, in order to keep scars covered (Whitlock, 2010). Regardless of the amount of privacy or how hidden the actions are, the intention is the important part. If someone is going so far as to injure him or herself for attention, he or she clearly needs the help (Caicedo & Whitlock, 2009). Dismissing self-injury as an attention-seeking behavior only furthers the stigma and its detrimental
Like many other mental health related issues, it’s viewed as foreign, abnormal, and crazy. It’s extremely unfortunate that this view is so common in society because it’s so important to be open and ready to discuss these issues. It’s awful how harmful simply accepting the stereotypes and encouraging the stigma really is, and terrifying how easy it is to fall into doing it. Personally, I was extremely curious what the real data was behind all the misconceptions and stigma surrounding self-injury and how that data compared to my own