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How Serious a Problem Are Cutting and Self-Injury Among Teens?
“
“
How Serious a
Problem Are
Cutting and
Self-Injury
Among Teens?
Self-injury is a behavior that is unfortunately show-
ing more frequency in tweens and teenagers.
”
—Jill Emanuele, a child psychologist with the Child Mind Institute.
Self-injury is accepted to be especially common in
teenagers.
”
—Claire M. Brickell, resident in child and adolescent psychiatry at Boston’s Massachusetts General Hospital/
McLean Hospital, and Michael S. Jellinek, professor of psychiatry and pediatrics at Harvard Medical School.
R
aychelle Cassada Lohmann is a therapist from South Carolina who
specializes in and writes about issues that affect teens, such as self-
harm. One day while waiting her turn to be served at a restaurant,
Lohmann watched a waitress assist other customers with their orders. “I
had seen her there many times,” says Lohmann, “but she usually wore
long sleeves. Today she had on a tee shirt. I noticed her arms were fully
tattooed. I began to study the tattoos and saw that below the vivid tattoos
were raised horizontal scars that extended up the inside of her arm. The
marks looked like that of a former cutter. The tattoos bore a sad story, of
