Cutting and other forms of self-injury are often cries for help, pleas for someone to notice that the pain is too much to bear. As Plante discusses here, the threat of suicide must always be carefully evaluated, although the majority of cutters are not in fact suicidal. Instead, cutting represents a rapidly spreading method for teens hoping to ease emotional pain and suffering. Bleeding from self-inflicted wounds not only helps to numb the cutter and vent despair, it can also be a dramatic means of communicating, controlling, and asking for help from others. Plante describes the frightening developmental tasks teenagers and young adults face, and how the central challenges of the three Is (Independence, Intimacy, and Identity) compel them to cope through self-destructive acts. Readers will come to a better understanding of these struggling teenagers and the dramatic methods they employ to ease and overcome their internal pain through a desperate need to cut and self-injure.
Lori G. Plante is Adjunct Clinical Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University Medical School. She is a clinical psychologist in private practice in Menlo Park, California, specializing in the assessment and treatment of adolescents and young adults. She is the author of numerous articles on eating disorders, sexuality, and sexual abuse in adolescents and young adults.
Table of Contents
1 Foreword2 1 Self-Injury on the Rampage3 2 Special Populations, Special Concerns: Teenagers Most at Risk4 3 Developmental Challenges in Adolescence: The Agony, the Ecstasy, the Cell Phone, and the Internet5 4 Why Teens Self-Injure: Doing All the Wrong Things for the Right Reasons6 5 Laying the Foundation for Intervention: Composure, Compassion, and Comprehension7 6 Professional Treatment of Self-Injury: Understanding the Therapeutic Process8 7 Specialized Approaches and Adjuncts in Treating Self-Injury9 8 The Brain as an Attitude Pharmacy: Neurochemical Roles and Remedies in Self-Injury10 9 Intervention in Action: How It Works11 10 Stepping Up to the Plate: How Parents Can Help12 11 Health and Happiness Are Verbs: The Responsibilities of the Adolescent in Treatment13 12 Depathologizing Adolescent Self-Injury: Cutting on a Continuum14 Conclusions: Reconceptualizing Cutting