This story reminded me of a time when I dated this girl. She seemed perfectly normal, was university educated, and held a good job. It was about 3 weeks into the relationship when I first noticed that her forearm was scarred with cut marks... letters and words. Could barely see it... perhaps it wasn't very deep when she first did it, or she got some sort of procedure to hide it after the fact. I asked her about it and she was obviously uncomfortable discussing it and replied quickly with, "yeah, stupid stuff when I was young". Didn't bring it up again and to be honest, she didn't fit my stereotype of what a person who would hurt themself might be like.
Apparently, from the story linked, 46% of U.S. highschool students have self-mutilated before. I find this quite shocking.
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servl.../lifeMain/home
Latoya had no intention of harming her boyfriend when she reached for the kitchen knife while in the throes of an argument with him four days ago.
Instead, she calmly dragged the serrated edge across the fleshy underside of her left forearm, as she has done for years when the stress of the moment becomes too much for her to bear.
Then she did it again, and again, until the skin broke and blood bubbled to the surface.
According to a study published in the August issue of the journal Psychological Medicine, 46 per cent of U.S. high school students surveyed had practised some form of self-mutilation in the past year, ranging from cutting and burning to pulling out hair and hitting themselves.