Abstract
Self-harm is a significant mental health issue in the twenty-first century. The recorded rise in various behaviours, including deliberate self-cutting and self-burning, have been widely remarked upon and lamented.1 Eminent cultural historian Sander Gilman has recently written of a global ‘sharp public awareness of self-harm as a major mental health issue’.2 The behaviour is usually said to be motivated by a desire to regulate feelings of intolerable tension, sadness or emotional numbness, and is almost always reported to be ‘on the increase’; it is also often reported as a problem primarily affecting young women.3 Despite a steady stream of books and articles on this emotive subject from the 1980s onwards — from psychiatrists, social workers and sociologists among others — there remains little meaningful historical analysis of this phenomenon.
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Notes
A rise in self-harm reported in August 2014 called the figures ‘alarming’, and the idea of self-harm itself as ‘deeply distressing’. J. Moorhead. ‘Self-harm among Children is on the Rise, But It’s Not Just the Victims Who We Need to Support’. http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/comment/selfharm-among-children-is-on-the-rise-but-its-not-just-the-victims-who-we-need-to-support-9662252.html accessed 12 August 2014. For an analysis of media coverage of self-harm in the United States, see
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For example the influential: J. Sutton, Healing the Hurt Within: Understand Self-Injury and Self-Harm, and Heal the Emotional Wounds 3rd ed. Oxford, How To Books (2007)
For example A.R. Favazza, Bodies Under Siege: Self-Mutilation, Nonsuicidal Self-Injury, and Body Modification in Culture and Psychiatry 3rd ed. Baltimore, Johns Hopkins University Press (2011)
For example Kraus et al., ‘Script-driven Imagery of Self-injurious Behavior in Patients with Borderline Personality Disorder: A Pilot FMRI Study’ Acta Psychiatrica Scandinavica 121(1) (2010): 41–51. I am grateful to Sarah Chaney for making this connection between neurological explanations in general and neurological triggers specifically
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Millard, C. (2015). Introduction: Self-Harm from Social Setting to Neurobiology. In: A History of Self-Harm in Britain. Mental Health in Historical Perspective. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-137-52962-6_1
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