Hello and

I'm your host, Dr. Ellen Hendrickson, and every week I'll help you meet life's

life's challenges with evidence-based research, a sympathetic ear, and zero judgment.

Self-harm is one of the last shameful topics. Today folks take a proud stand against being fat-shamed or

slut-shamed, but it's a rare individual who will stand up and disclose his or

her own self-injury. But self-harm is a surprisingly widespread phenomenon that affects

youth and adults, men and women. So this week we'll cover four reasons individuals harm themselves and four ways to stop.

So self-harm is far more widespread than you might suspect.

A 2012 review of 52 different self-injury studies from around the world found that around

18% of individuals had cut or otherwise deliberately injured themselves in their lifetime.

That's almost one in five.

Now, cutting often begins in the teenage years, on average between the ages of 12 and 14. And in the US, more than 7% of teenagers have cut,

burned, or deliberately injured themselves in the past year alone.

Now, the technical term for cutting

is non-suicidal self-injury.

And it's defined as the deliberate self-inflicted

destruction of body tissue. And there are two caveats. One,

cutters are not trying to kill themselves. On the contrary, they often do it to feel alive,

rather than numbed. And two, it's for, quote,

purposes not socially sanctioned. So your daughter piercing her nose or belly button

doesn't count no matter how you feel about it. But cutting,

burning, carving words or symbols into their skin, painful hair pulling, or

...