by Erin Leger

Created on: April 14, 2009   Last Updated: March 22, 2011

Self injury is as misunderstood and diverse as the multitude of people who practice it. The words conjure up images of angsty teenagers sitting alone in their dark rooms just hoping for attention, but is that really a fair representation?

Self injury is most commonly known as "cutting" because it is the best known of all forms of self injury. This is the direct result of a cycle of perpetuation and reporting. The stereotypical depressed teenager knows about cutting because that is the picture of harm so she cuts herself and is caught by her parents who force her to seek help and she becomes another statistic. Luckily most kids who cut never intended to kill themselves or even to inflict severe pain.

But there is more to the story that is never talked about, never caught, and never reported. It can sometimes be more frightening than the assumed epidemic that most of us are aware of, and it is far more difficult to understand. Another common form if self injury is burning. Burning is often more severe than cutting because of its very nature. A small burn can be a hundred times more dangerous than a bad cut. A third degree burn is, first and foremost, more painful than many people can tolerate and can cause shock immediately. A third degree burn, also, cannot grow skin back, nor does it form a scab so if the blister is removed there is no way for the burn to naturally protect itself. Burns can get infected very easily and even a small infection can be lethal if untreated. A third degree burn can take weeks longer than a cut to heal because it will remain open until scar tissue fills it in, that means many more chances of infection.

Burning is not often caught because it can take a while for someone to move from something like cutting to burning. Cutting is socially recognized if not acceptable and screams out to others that one is in pain. Everyone in today's society can recognize a cut on a wrist as the mark of someone in a rough place, and it often is just a cry for help and will not get worse after treatment is started. But for those who kept it secret or, perhaps, started cutting later in life without their parents to take care of it for them, have a chance of moving on to other things because, perhaps, the need for distraction increases, or there may be other reasons.

Self injury could, in some cases, have nothing to do with depression. A large amount of pain causes the brain to release a large amount of endorphins which imitate opiates, causing a feeling

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