21
How Serious a Problem Are Cutting and Self-Injury Among Teens?
of self-injury and found that 53 of them had done so at least once during
the past year. This included 7.6 percent of third graders, 4 percent of sixth
graders, and 12.7 percent of ninth graders. The methods used for self-
harming differed based on gender, with cutting most common among girls
and boys most often hitting themselves. “A lot of people tend to think that
school-aged children, they’re happy, they don’t have a lot to worry about,”
says study author Benjamin L. Hankin from the University of Denver.
“Clearly a lot more kids are doing this than people have known.”
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The Global Picture
Another 2012 study, which focused on the worldwide prevalence of self-
injury, was led by University of Wisconsin researcher and noted self-
injury expert Jennifer J. Muehlenkamp. The need for such research is
explained in the final report, which was published in March 2012 in the
journal
Child and Adolescent Psychiatry and Mental Health
. In the report
Muehlenkamp and colleagues discuss how existing studies suggest that
a significant number of adolescents are likely to engage in self-injury at
some point during their lifetimes. “Yet,” they add, “there remain a num-
ber of inconsistencies within the literature that need to be addressed in
order to have a stronger understanding of the true scope of the problem.”
The authors go on to explain the reasoning behind focusing on world-
wide prevalence, even though doing so presented a number of daunting
challenges: “The lack of cross-nation comparisons is a striking deficit in
the study of self-injury because it precludes drawing conclusions that
could inform international policies and efforts to prevent these behav-
iours among adolescents.”
30
The comprehensive research involved an in-depth examination of
fifty-two peer-reviewed, empirical (based on experience rather than only
theory) studies of adolescent self-injury that were conducted between
January 1, 2005, and December 1, 2011. These studies were published
by researchers from the United States, Canada, China, Japan, India, Ko-
rea, Australia, New Zealand, and a number of countries in Europe. The
focus was limited to lifetime prevalence because many countries that
compile data about self-injury do not track six-month or twelve-month
prevalence. Muehlenkamp’s group made a clear distinction between non-
suicidal self-injury (NSSI) and deliberate self-harm (DSH) because, de-
pending on the country, either term may be used. The report states:
