There are a huge number of reasons why people choose to self-harm – and the more we discuss them, and the reasons behind them, the better, say experts in the run-up to Self-Harm Awareness Day
Three years ago, with her parents and sisters out for dinner, then-13-year-old Lucy found herself alone in her family’s Lincolnshire home. Dressed in her pink Tinker Bell pyjamas, she began to make herself a cup of tea. Then she spotted an object on the kitchen counter that immediately diverted her attention. “Shall I do it?” Lucy asked herself. “Will it stop the pain?”
For Lucy, now 17, that evening marked the start of a two-and-a-half year struggle with self-harm. Two weeks before, she had been brutally attacked and raped (which she now describes as “the incident”). At the time, anxious they wouldn’t believe her, Lucy never fully revealed to anyone what had happened. In her mind, she tried to repress the rape. She began shutting herself in her bedroom. She told her parents she was feeling unwell. Physical pain, she decided, was the only way to purge her pent-up emotional pain.
Related: How I managed to stop self-injuring and get on with my life | Mary Hamilton
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