Self-Harm

self harm

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Lent in the Christian tradition is a time of sacrifice and penance. It also is a period of purification and enlightenment. Pain purifies. It atones for sin and cleanses the soul. Or at least that’s the idea. Theological questions aside, can self-inflicted pain really alleviate the guilt associated with immoral acts? A new study published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, explores the psychological consequences of experiencing bodily pain.

Psychological scientist Brock Bastian of the University of Queensland, Australia and his colleagues recruited a group of young men and women under the guise they were part of a study of mental and physical acuity. Under this pretense, they asked them to write short essays about a time in their lives when they had ostracized someone; this memory of being unkind was intended to prime their personal sense of immorality—and make them feel guilty. A control group merely wrote about a routine event in their lives. [continue reading…]

Actress Meera Syal, 47, was compelled to make a new BBC documentary tackling the subject of self-harm.
Meera was moved after reading the shocking statistics from the Mental Health Foundation that young Asian women are three times more likely to self-harm than any other group.
It was around 11 years ago that Meera picked up a newspaper and read the headline ‘Young Asian women are three times more likely to self-harm than any other group’. [continue reading…]

 The New York Times has an article on the disturbing and hard-to-treat phenomenon of self-harming behaviour that experts say is increasing among adolescents and young adults. 

 

 

 
It expresses emotional pain or feelings that I’m unable to put into words.”

“It’s a way to have control over my body because I can’t control anything else in my life.” 

 I feel relieved and less anxious after I cut. The emotional pain slowly slips away into the physical pain.”

This new  research study is published in in the August 2007 issue of Psychological Medicine. Lead author is  Elizabeth Lloyd-Richardson,PhD, an assistant professor of psychiatry and human behaviour at Brown Medical School and The Miriam Hospital.She is a clinical psychologist, specializing in child and adolescent psychopathology, particularly as it realtes to medical conditions and health behaviours. [continue reading…]