LAS CRUCES, N.M. — Everyone knows that skin naturally recoils from the sharpness of a razor.
But sometimes, it doesn’t.
Horizontal slashes on a 14-year-old girl’s arms, and scars on her ankles and knees are proof.
She is a Mayfield High School freshman — among an estimated 13 percent to 20 percent of adolescents who injure themselves. The majority are female and exhibit burns, scratches and cuts like hers.
For the Mayfield student, who has requested anonymity, it started with dark thoughts in fifth grade. Later, she began cutting her knees with disposable razors when family arguments would trigger feelings of guilt.
“I just thought maybe if I felt pain, it would teach me to learn a lesson,” she said. “It turned into a relief thing.” The girl later placed sewing needles under her skin. Then she started cutting her wrists.
“I was always afraid, before, that I would hit a vein. It got to where I just stopped caring,” she said. “If I died, I died.” The stress and pressure children and teens can face might be hard to understand — a lost love, a sister’s miscarriage, a brother’s drug-dabbling, a flunked essay or a group of friends ditching class to drink alcohol.
When a close friend threatened to pull her friendship with the Mayfield girl, she stopped cutting herself for seven months. A series of trauma led her to start again.
She spent a week in the hospital after threatening suicide. She was prescribed antidepressants. A violent episode in a friend’s bathroom — one of 16 suicide attempts — ended with her arms bloody and her hands in police handcuffs. She spent two more months in residential treatment.
Psychologist Martin Greer said he’s seen the problem throughout his 18 years with Las Cruces Public Schools, and more than half of the district’s middle school counselors have reported an increase.
A recent mental health conference convened counselors, parents, students and teachers from across Las Cruces to focus on identification, prevention and intervention of suicidal or self-injurious behavior.
Lisa Grayshield, associate professor of counseling and psychology at New Mexico State University, said not much data exists on cutting.
“This phenomenon is fairly recent,” she said.
Self-injury just doesn’t rank as high a concern as bullying or drug abuse, she said.
“Counselors and nurses run across this because either a kid comes to a counselor or a teacher or friend or parent might refer them, of course, because they see a kid cutting on themselves and it’s very, very serious,” she said.
While an estimated 50 percent of those who self-injure are at risk of suicide, Grayshield cautions that the two don’t necessary relate.
“People who cut are at greater risk, but in terms of people who complete suicides, it’s not a predictor,” Grayshield said.
The Mayfield girl last cut herself in June. She is taking medication, and is getting along with her therapist. Home life is more stable, and she said she has more people to look up to.
In addition to seeking help from family members, neutral parties or therapists, Greer said people who self-injure can help themselves.
If it’s pain they seek, they can hold ice cubes in their hands or snap rubber bands around their wrists or arms. When it’s blood they want to see, they can simulate it by drawing on themselves with red marker, or applying red nail polish on their skin.
The Mayfield girl tried the rubber bands and the red lines, but what helps her more is painting, venting online, writing stories, texting a friend and most of all, human contact. That helps her remember that she is a person who is loved.
Grayshield said people who self-injure, especially at the middle school level, can be serious — or copycats.
“There can be four or five kids where it’s sort of a trendy thing that they do once or twice and they say, ‘well, that wasn’t very fun.’ But there are about 20 percent (of cutters) who have more serious psychological problems,” she said.
Brigitte Zigelhofer, whose son is a Las Cruces seventh grader, said parents need to be aware of what their children are doing and listen to their concerns — especially when they’re sad or upset.
“What’s important to a child may not seem like a big deal to an adult,” she said. “We have to remember their worries are different from ours.” The Mayfield girl said it’s important to lend an ear without judgment.
“It’s the whole, ‘you wouldn’t understand’ thing,”‘ she said.
“And the best thing to say is, ‘I know I don’t understand. But I can be there for you. Don’t be sorry for having feelings.”‘
