What Are the Causes for ‘Self-Cutting’ Amongst Teenagers

What are the causes for ‘self-cutting’ amongst teenagers? **In our time and age, the issue of self-cutting amongst teenagers has been in the limelight and become a serious social problem. Injuring yourself on purpose by making scratches or cuts on your body with a sharp object which can be enough to break the skin and make it bleed is called self-cutting. There are a lot of debates have taken place about the causes of self-cutting amongst teenagers. It can be hard to understand why people cut themselves on purpose. But there are three obvious reasons cause self-cutting amongst teenagers which are psychological factors, excessive pressure and influence of mass media.

The chief cause of this issue is psychological factors. Majority who suicide are introvert, unsocial, self-centered, difficult to establish normal relationships with others. When they face difficulties and could not find anyone to talk to or to vent their pain, they choose self-cutting. Usually People who self-cut are not usually seeking to end their own life; it had been suggested instead that they are using self-cutting as a coping mechanism to relieve emotional pain or as an attempt to communicate distress.

Furthermore, education nowadays has become more competitive. Test scores, Grade Point Average (GPA) and ranking represent all praise and glory. Schools and parents neglect the importance and necessity of mental health education. They are too strict and set too high expectations which will absolutely increase the pressure amongst teenagers. Once teenagers could not reach the requirements and expectations, they choose to hurt themselves because they are afraid of being blamed. Cutting might seem like the only way to relief the heavy academic burden and the unpleasant learning environment.

Last but not least, mass media is the most powerful medium to transmit the messages. Since the thinking of most of teenager are still immature and cannot differentiate whether true or false, they copy all the things which exposed on mass media as the Internet just to show off that they are updated. For instance, the pictures or videos of self-cutting are posted on facebook , youtube, twitter and so on ultimately contribute to the imitation of teenagers. Therefore, the tragic secretly develop.

In conclusion, I believe that we must recognize how serious this problem is. We must put in more efforts to avoid these causes happen as self-cutting can be a habit forming. It can become a compulsive behavior which means that the more a person does it, the more he or she feels the need to do it. When cutting becomes a compulsive behavior, it can seem impossible to stop.