Personally Speaking is our quarterly newsletter in which we discuss mental health topics.  The purpose of our newsletter is to inform and educate the community on personal issues, concerns facing our community, methods of treatment, and developments in related fields.  It is Avenues intent to not only provide care for individuals but to promote and create a healthy environment for our families.

Teenage Romance: Puppy Love or Addicted Love Disaster?
The Many Faces of Anxiety
Looking to the Mirror to Find Themselves
ADHD vs. the Bipolar Child: Facts vs. Fiction
Self-Mutilation vs. Suicide Attempts: The Tragedy of Mood Instability
Coping with Trauma
The Power of Perception
Sharpen Your Saw this Spring

Self-Mutilation vs. Suicide Attempts: The Tragedy of Mood Instability 

A large misconception in our society today is that people who self-mutilate are trying to kill themselves. Self-mutilation is a deliberate act to harm one's own body, without the intention to cause death. The act is often followed by a sense of immediate relief. but even when the stressful situation is removed from one's life, the tendency to self-mutilate is not alleviated.

Those who attempt suicide actually have the intent to kill themselves with accompanying thoughts of death and dying. Suicidal clients also tend to improve when they are removed from stressful situations, whereas self-mutilators do not.

The basic characteristics of self-mutilators are also different from those who attempt suicide. Self-mutilators are typically adolescent females, middle to upper middle class, and of above average intelligence.  Those who attempt suicide are from all socioeconomic classes and a wider age range. Females more typically attempt suicide, but males generally have a higher success rate.

Common conditions that trigger self-mutilation in teens are:

• Losses that reactivate earlier losses
• Peer conflict and intimacy problems
• Body alienation issues
• Sexual identity issues
• Poor impulse control
• Trauma-based backgrounds
• Disturbed childhood attachments: neglect, parental overindulgence, divorce, family disruption, feelings of abandonment
• Disturbance of body image
• History of sexual, physical or emotional abuse

Some of these triggers may result in the adolescent having difficulty accepting comfort and help from others; many do not know how to attain meaningful relationships.  Self-mutilators tend to keep others at a distance, avoiding intimacy and preferring isolation.

Why do people self mutilate?

• Attention seeking
• Risk taking
• Tension relief
• Reduces sense of alienation
• Ritual symbolism
• Manipulation
• Inappropriate communication skills
• Depression and/or low self-worth
• Self punishment
• Terminate dissociation

For self-mutilators, the physical pain they feel is easier to deal with than the emotional pain they have inside.

Signs of self-mutilation:

• Cutting, burning, biting, hitting body parts with objects or against a wall
• Castration, amputation, bone-breaking, hair pulling, or picking at sores
• Using knives, cigarettes, lighters, safety pins, earrings, fingernails, barrettes, pencils, pens or razor blades to hurt oneself
• Attending school with long sleeves and pants on a hot day, or if more attention-seeking, rolling up sleeves to show classmates the self-mutilation
• Difficulty expressing emotions
• Dislikes self and body

Treatment for those who self-mutilate includes a combination of:

• Physician involvement
• Psychiatric evaluation
• Individual and group therapy

In addition, family therapy is essential to assist parents in dealing with their child's behaviors and learning how to communicate better with each other.

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