WHY OUR UNHAPPY TEENS ARE HARMING THEMSELVES
HANNAH was 14 when she first cut herself. A combination of exam stress and her parents divorcing left her feeling that her only release was to physically harm herself by cutting her arm.
Now 19, Hannah, from Newport, is one of thousands of teenagers across the country who still hurt themselves on purpose.
A recent report by the Children’s Society suggested that nearly a quarter of 14-year-old girls in the UK said they had self-harmed.
Hannah (not her real name) said: “Well, I was doing GCSEs at the time when my parents were divorcing as well. And I didn’t get on with my dad – it was all a bit messy.
“I had a friend who probably wasn’t a great influence. So I suppose that’s probably where I got the idea from originally.
“They self-harmed as well. So it wasn’t that I was copying but I think it was the fact that that’s how they dealt with it.
“So I thought maybe it would help me if I dealt with it like that.
“I didn’t think it was a big deal at the time – it was afterwards. It wasn’t a good day.”
One in six of more than 11,000 children surveyed reported self-harming at the age of 14, including nearly one in 10 boys.
The self-harm statistics follow new analysis included in the charity’s annual Good Childhood Report, which look at children’s well-being in the UK.
Out of the 11,000 children surveyed, one in six reported self-harming at 14.
Based on these figures, the Children’s Society estimates that nearly 110,000 children aged 14 may have self-harmed across the UK during the same 12-month period, including 76,000 girls and 33,000 boys.
The report looks at the reasons behind the unhappiness which increases the risk of children self- harming. One of the most common reasons for self-harm is bullying, which led Chloe Edmunds to begin self-harming aged 13.
Chloe, from Abertillery, now 17, said: “I was bullied and it was really full-on through social media, you couldn’t get away from it.
“It would start at about 8.30am and last through the day and then start up and again the next day.
“It was mainly through media but face to face, too.
“Social media is a massive part of a social young girl’s life. With today’s social media you get things that say girls should be a certain way or not a certain way, and with everything to do with LGBTQ you get people who just don’t understand.”
Chloe was bullied because of her weight, and said that she self-harmed as a “release”.
She stopped self-harming aged 16. She said: “I realised that once I stopped I’ve still got these scars.
“You have got people who say teenagers do it just for attention but it’s not like that, it was all to do with the bullying.
“I don’t really take notice of the scars any more, but I used to see them and think ‘I used to do that’. It’s sad to think I did that to myself.”
Rebecca Maggs, from Newport, started self-harming when she was 14.
Rebecca, now 21, was bullied in person and via Facebook because she has cerebral palsy.
It was when bullies told her to go and kill herself that she decided to start self-harming.
She said: “I was told once to go and kill myself. I thought if I self-harmed I wouldn’t have to kill myself.”
Her bullies also tormented her through Facebook, and Rebecca said that social media has a negative impact on young people, especially teenage girls.
Rebecca said: “Social media isn’t a good thing because there is no faceto-face contact, it’s all done through a computer or a phone with Facebook Messenger, Twitter or text messages, because you can’t see the person you are doing it to.
“You don’t know what aspects and