This morning I witnessed cut marks on my 15 year old daughter's arm. My first reaction was that of shock and disbelief, then anger for the lie she told about falling into a thorn bush. Eventually I settled on sadness that she wasn't able to tell me what was going on in her life that she felt the need to self harm. I cried, then cried some more in self pity and a lack of understanding. It's not easy being a parent, especially in today's world. It is so different from when I was an adolescent. I think that there is much more peer pressure on younger children/adolescents to do and experiment with many things that older kids did in my day.

Self harm is described as the act of deliverately destroying body tissue to change a wasy of feeling and has become more popular lately. Having done a bit of research on the internet, I find that girls are 4 times more likely to self mutilate than boys up to the age of 16 and common triggers include girlfriend/boyfriend relationship problems as well as school and home problems. Apparantly, no one factor has been shown to predict self harm, but a combination of several external pressures. Further information suggests that some children see it as a coping strategy over which they have control and that it can be a means of communicating pain and distress to others.

There is a sizeable body of research into interventions to prevent or reduce episodes of self-harm among adults, but comparatively little for children and adolescents. Interventions explored to help children and adolescents who self-harm include forms of cognitive behavioural therapy, and group and family therapy.

No form of treatment has been found to be effective in stopping or significantly reducing self-harm among children and young people, but some interventions do positively affect other factors associated with self-harm in this population, such as depression and emotional control. Self-help groups and peer support programmes have been proposed as potentially effective means of providing some sort of help to children and adolescents who self-harm. Young people have complained that many A&E and other health staff can be judgmental, unhelpful and unwilling to understand. They want to be treated with respect and sympathy. No intervention is known which can stop young people self-harming completely, but there are therapies that can successfully reduce the amount a person self-harms. Also, young people can be reluctant to say they have stopped altogether.

It transpires that the cause of my daughter's self mutilation was the end of a platonic relationship with a boy. He cheated on her (not sure of the details).  She has said that she should have talked to us about it, but felt that it would cause her to break down and cry again. She sees that self mutilation was not the right way to deal with it and I can only hope that that was the one and only time she will partake in that activity. Here's hoping.........