SELF-HARM RESOURCES

ORGANIZATIONS & WEBSITES

Coping Today
On-line information and support

Cut The Movie

An intimate and profoundly moving look at unspoken issue

Healthy Place
On-line forums and support groups

LCE

The Secret Cut

DVD and explanation especially for parents and adults

Self-Abuse Finally Ends
S.A.F.E. Alternatives:  information, resources, referrals. Self-Injury Hotline: 1-800-DONT CUT

Self-Injury and Related Issues (SIARI)
The aim of SIARI is to inform, educate, and offer support to self-injurers and those who support them. It includes creative works of self-injurers, message boards, a moderated online support group for helpers, a bookstore, articles, fact sheets, and extensive list of links and resources.
 

 

Self-Mutilators Anonymous
A New York support group founded by two men in 1986. One of the founders is Sheldon Goldberg.

See also WebMD and Kids Health and

Google. Call a trusted clinic or counselor and ask for referral.

 

ARTICLES

Hunter, Holly Dawn. (Nov/Dec 2004) "I Felt Dead Inside," Campus Life.

Drs. James Murakami, Brian Coley & Mark Hogan (3Dec08) “Radiologists Diagnose and Treat Self-embedding Disorder in Teens,” Radiological Society of North America, Contact: Linda Brooks (lbrooks@rsna.org, or 630...) 

Walt Mueller (200?) “Crying Through Their Cuts: The Stark Reality of Physical Self-Abuse,” Center for Parent/Youth Understanding (

www.cpyu.org)  

BOOKS

Lawrence E. Shapiro (2008) Stopping the Pain: A Workbook for Teens Who Cut & Self-Injure, Instant Help Books, 147pp. This comprehensive workbook has helped teenagers harming themselves explore reasons behind their need to hurt, while suggesting ways to deal with underlying stress and need to control. About this book a mother said (in Amazon review) “I bought this book for my daughter while we were learning about self-injury… when she opened the book, she didn’t want to stop reading it.”  A therapist also affirms its value. 

Jan Kern (2007) Scars That Wound, Scars That Heal: A Journey Out of Self-Injury, Standard Publishing Co., 237pp. Written from a faith perspective, the reader “walks alongside Jackie, whose arms are marked with reminders of the painful journey she thought she had to take alone…” This writer shares her own struggle, loss, pain and questioning—and passion to know God deeply.

Conterio, K. et al. (1998). Bodily Harm: The Breakthrough Treatment Program for Self-injurers

. See S.A.F.E. above. See cutting and self-injury as choice rather than disease (OCD) and will to live rather than step toward suicide.

Favazza, A. (1996). Bodies Under Siege

. The John Hopkins University Press. Armando Favazza is professor of Psychiatry at the University of Missouri and a Fellow of both the American Psychiatric Association and the American College of Psychiatrists. Of this book, the Journal of the American Medical Association says: "A comprehensive, historical, anthropological, and clinical account of self-mutilation." Favazza makes sense out of seemingly senseless self-mutilative behaviors.

Hewitt, K. (1997). Mutilating the Body: Identity in Blood and Ink

.

Kettelwell, Caroline (2002) Skin Game: A Memoir, St. Martin’s Griffin, 192p. This stands out, not as research or treatment, but as a compelling story of one girl who began to cut herself at age 12.

 

Levenkon, Steven (1998) Cutting: Understanding and Overcoming Self-Mutilation, W.W. Norton & Co., 269p.  The psychotherapist who wrote Best Little Girl in the World about Obsessive Compulsive Disorders and has written on eating disorders uses similar medical and therapeutic model to focus in this book on self-injury.

 

Miller, Dusty (1994) Women Who Hurt Themselves: A Book of Hope & Understanding, Basic Books, 280 pp.  This is a very readable book that has helped women who endured years of abuse and/or neglect. It helps explain the cultural factors, the lasting effects of early trauma, the release afforded by self-harm, and means of recovery.

Ng, G. (1998). Everything You Need to Know about Self-mutilation: A Helping Book for Teens who Hurt Themselves. Need to know library.

Penner, Mary. (1998). Hope and Healing for Kids Who Cut

. Zondervan. The author, a veteran youth worker and counselor, teaches youth ministry at Briercrest College and Seminary in Saskatchewan, Canada. This book is written insightfully and sensitively for parents and adults who care about kids in pain, but in a way that makes it profitable for cutters themselves. Helpful diagrams and practical "boxes" of personal advice.

Strong, M. (1998). A Bright Red Scream: Self Mutilation and the Language of Pain. Looks at a nation obsessed with cutting. Kirkus Reviews describes this book as "a compassionate and informed discussion of self-mutilation, the ‘addiction of the nineties,’ practiced by two million or more Americans." Booklist adds: "Strong thoughtfully presents current cultural, cognitive, psychoanalytic, and pharmacological perspectives on the causes of cutting."

Sutton, Jan (2005). Healing the Hurt within: Understand Self-Injury and Self-Harm and Heal the Emotional Wounds (2nd edition). Oxford: How to Books.

Walsh, B.W. & Rosen, P.M. (eds). (1998). Self-mutilation: Theory, Research and Treatment

.

Dean Borgman cCYS