Why are our girls hurting themselves?
Girls as young as 11 and 12 have been involved in a club in which they posted pictures of self-harm on social media. Michelle Duff reports.
Entry into the exclusive club was by invitation only. The rules were simple: cut yourself, and then share a picture on social media. The girls were 11 and 12 years old.
When Frankie* found out her daughter, then 12, was part of this club, she was livid. She wanted to know what the school was doing to shut it down. She says the answer was vague – if it’s not happening on school property, they said, there’s nothing we can do. Soon after, an item about cyber-bullying appeared in the newsletter.
Frankie knew her daughter had been having trouble with some of the ‘‘cool’’ girls. ‘‘I kind of fobbed her off, being like, ‘Oh, girls will be girls, they’re just being bitchy.’ I said: ‘You’ve just got to be you, don’t worry about what they’re saying.’ ’’
It was the school that told Frankie her daughter had been cutting herself. Alone, in her bedroom at night. One of her friends had confided in a teacher.
‘‘It’s not anything I ever saw coming. You don’t ever expect your kids to do this, do you? I think she viewed this as an option, ‘I’m not feeling good about myself and I’m gonna do this.’ They’re all looking for validation among their peer group, and on the internet.
‘‘I try and tell her: ‘What you see on the internet isn’t real. How many times do you think she had to take this photo to get 123 likes?’
‘‘But she thinks she’s a big girl, and she’s starting to have boys look at her, and that’s the other problem.’’
Maybe Frankie should not have been so shocked. Research has found self-harm among young people is common: almost a third of New Zealand teenagers report hurting themselves intentionally at least once.
About 20 per cent of those who self-harm have thought about suicide, as-yetunpublished research from the same long-term study, led by Victoria University psychology professor Marc Wilson, shows.
Rather than wanting to die, those who self-harm often use it as kind of a coping strategy. But it is a worrying sign of distress, that can spiral into suicidal ideation and death.
‘‘The reasons extend from ‘My friend tried it, she told me it was good, I thought I’d try it too,’ to ‘I want someone to listen to me,’ to frustration, to self-hatred, to body image issues,’’ says youth health expert Sue Bagshaw. ‘‘Anxiety is massive, too – young people have a lot to contend with, these days.’’
Most studies, including Wilson’s Youth Wellbeing Study, focus on high school kids. International research suggests the onset of self-harm is around age 12-14, and is more common among girls.
But figures obtained by Stuff show pre-teen girls as young as 10 are increasingly at risk of selfinjury, with a 20 per cent rise in the number of adolescent girls treated at hospital for selfinflicted injuries nationwide in the past four years.
Across all age groups, women are twice as likely to be seen with self-harm injuries than men. But when it comes to girls between 10 and 14, the difference is more stark.
In 2017, girls this age were almost eight times more likely to hurt themselves to the point they needed hospital treatment than boys, according to the Ministry of Health data.
Last year alone, 436 girls in this age group – many of whom are still attending primary and intermediate school – were discharged from hospital. That doesn’t count those who saw GPs or administered to their own wounds.
Hospital discharges for selfharm peak between the ages of 15-19, with 1974 young women and 532 men treated for selfinflicted injuries in 2017.
Psychologists, guidance counsellors and principals say they are dealing with more and younger people self-harming, with the earlier onset of puberty and detrimental effect of social media thought to be contributing to the rise.
They say the Ministry of Education needs to prioritise youth mental health, providing funding for school guidance counsellors and more support for schools well before year 9.
‘‘Self-harm has really started to raise it’s head over the last few years,’’ says the principal of Christchurch’s Kirkwood Intermediate School, Phil Tappenden. ‘‘The impact it has can be really serious on our young people, and it can be really hard for a teacher to see any evidence of it – often we’re told by their friends.
‘‘We’re having kids talking about things at 11 and 12 that they would have been talking about at 14 or 15. Social media can be a helpful tool for good, but there are many aspects that can be used in a negative way.’’
A recent Otago University analysis found almost half of all girls get their periods before high school, in line with a lowering age of menstruation
globally. Changing bodies and emotions, along with pressures to behave in a certain way – to be sexually attractive, to get more ‘‘likes’’ on a photograph, to fit in – are part of what it now means to be a girl at this age.
While the stated age limit for social media sites like Instagram and multimedia messaging app Snapchat is 13, in reality many younger kids are using these.
On Instagram, users can create private groups to share photos and videos. Others document self-harm more publicly, with hashtags used to group content together. A brief perusal through some of these easily accessible hashtags is distressing – this is footage that’s difficult for anyone to watch, let alone a 10-year-old.
Even images that some would argue is empowering – the roadto-wellbeing shots, the recovery – is still enough to seed an idea, Frankie’s mum reckons. ‘‘The stuff they’re viewing and sharing is a bit too traumatic for their brains to understand, it’s no wonder they don’t know what’s what.’’
Netsafe spokesman Sean Lyons says it’s difficult to say whether social media exacerbates self-harm. ‘‘It is very easy to say if we switched it all off these ‘cutting clubs’ wouldn’t exist and we’d be in a better place, but for many of those who are socially isolated and feel different from the norms, the tools the internet provides is one of connection. If we have an opportunity to see the problematic behaviour, we also have an opportunity to act, which we didn’t have before.’’
For Anna*, 16, selfharming was a way of making the pain disappear. She began at 8, as a way of dealing with sexual abuse.
‘‘I used it as coping, in my eyes, because it was better than taking my own life. I used it as an alternative. It was like I was drowning, and it [self-harm] was like coming up for fresh air, it was releasing all my pain.’’
At high school another girl saw her scars in the changing room, and told a guidance counsellor. Anna initially denied it, but eventually opened up.
‘‘It wasn’t just someone saying ‘stop it, that’s bad’, they were showing they cared. When someone sits down and says I understand why you’re doing this and I don’t want to see you suffer because I care about you, that really helped.’’
Auckland clinical psychologist Eve Hermanssen-Webb says one of the functions of selfinjury is to manage intense emotions. ‘‘It’s an age where our brains aren’t really geared to regulate themselves.
‘‘What you hope is that, with help, people will grow out of it and learn how to regulate their feelings.’’
In her PhD research, she found self-harm could spread among groups of like-minded girls. This makes it imperative for schools to address it.
When young people selfinjure, they receive what’s known as ‘‘social’’ and ‘‘automatic’’ reinforcement, she says.
Socially, they may be encouraged by friends saying it’s ‘‘cool’’, reactions on social media, parents or friends being worried about them, or getting to skip exams. The immediate payback is perceived relief from emotional discomfort, through the short-term distraction and the endorphin release of pain.
‘‘This is why it’s really important to figure out what’s behind the behaviour, how to give that person what they really need and to discuss effective ways to express emotions and deal with distress.’’
‘‘The trend we’ve noticed in our statistics and across the country is that the students who are doing this are getting younger. The Government does not fund for these young people, and in schools there is no support,’’ says Jean Andrews, the school counsellor representative on the national body, the New Zealand Association for Counsellors.
Its own research shows one in five students who seek out a counsellor are self-harming. Andrews would see at least one a week.
Currently, guidance counsellors are funded for secondary school age – year 9 – and upwards. If schools with younger pupils want one, they have to pay from their own budgets. Most do not.
‘‘Teachers are not trained for this. There should be one or two people dealing with these at-risk students – if you don’t have a counsellor, there needs to be someone trained in managing vulnerable children,’’ Andrews said.
‘‘Sometimes young people could be self-harming in order to kill themselves, and you need someone who is trained to assess if it’s suicidal in nature or not.’’
Phil Tappenden’s school, Kirkwood Intermediate, receives no extra funding to employ a school counsellor. The board of trustees considers it so important that it pays out of the school’s own locally raised funds, he says. ‘‘They’re invaluable for us, they can talk to the students and mediate a discussion with the families.’’ It makes no sense to wait until issues are already entrenched before helping kids, he says.
Currently, there is no national self-harm protocol consistently adopted by every school. The Ministry of Education publishes a suicide resource kit, which includes a section on self-harm. This is now five years old.
However, the ministry says a new kit with a ‘‘clear protocol on responding to self-harm’’ will be available in 2019.
In a statement, deputy secretary sector support Katrina Casey said extra help was available through each school’s Resource Teachers: Learning and Behaviour service. Children could also be referred to mental health services.
It did not answer questions about why primary and intermediate schools did not receive any support, or if this would be possible.
Anna has now been ‘‘clean’’, without injury, for two months. She’s learned other ways to cope, which for her includes counselling, surrounding herself with positive people, and taking herself into crowded places in vulnerable moments.
She wants others to know it’s possible to stop. ‘‘Just keep fighting, and ask for help. Everyone is afraid but when you take that first step you’re not walking it alone any more.’’
* Names have been changed.