What is Emo?
What You Need To Know To Protect Children
Self Injury/Cutting
Self Injury Information:
Here are some article and information that should help the reader understand the current trends in self injury and emo. Please note that it is never the claim that of this site that only kids involved with emo self injure. Self injury takes place with individuals from all walks of life. It is our contention, however, that the glorification of self injury by the emo subculture, which is plainly shown on this site, has caused a shrp increase in self injury. Please see the images and notations, and you will probably conclude as we did. There is a relationship, and the kids are showing us with what they post on line.
Cutting:
Self Injury is defined as follows:
Self-injury is the act of deliberately destroying body tissue, at times to change a way of feeling. Self-injury is seen differently by groups and cultures within society. This appears to
have become more popular lately, especially in adolescents. The causes and severity of self-injury can vary. Some forms may include: carving
· scratching
· branding
· marking
· picking, and pulling skin and hair
· burning/abrasions
· cutting
· biting
· head banging (Admin Note: This has nothing to do with music. This is about intentionally hitting one's head to cause injury
or pain)
· bruising
· hitting
· tattooing
· excessive body piercing
Some adolescents may self-mutilate to take risks, rebel, reject their parents' values, state their individuality or merely be accepted. Others, however, may injure themselves out of
desperation or anger to seek attention, to show their hopelessness and worthlessness, or because they have suicidal thoughts. These children may suffer from serious psychiatric problems
such as depression, psychosis, Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) and Bipolar Disorder. Additionally, some adolescents who engage in self-injury may develop Borderline Personality
Disorder as adults. Some young children may resort to self-injurious acts from time to time but often grow out of it. Children with mental retardation and/or autism may also show these
behaviors which may persist into adulthood. Children who have been abused or abandoned may self-mutilate.
Why do adolescents self-injure?
Adolescents who have difficulty talking about their feelings may show their emotional tension, physical discomfort, pain and low self-esteem with self-injurious behaviors. Although they
may feel like the "steam" in the "pressure cooker" has been released following the act of hurting themselves, teenagers may instead feel hurt, anger, fear and hate. The effects of peer
pressure and contagion can also influence adolescents to injure themselves. Even though fads come and go, most of the wounds on the adolescents' skin will be permanent. Occasionally,
teenagers may hide their scars, burns and bruises due to feeling embarrassed, rejected or criticized about their deformities.
What can parents and teenagers do about self-injury?
Parents are encouraged to talk with their children about respecting and valuing their bodies. Parents should also serve as role models for their teenagers by not engaging in acts of
self-harm. Some helpful ways for adolescents to avoid hurting themselves include learning to:
- accept reality and find ways to make the present moment more tolerable.
- dentify feelings and talk them out rather than acting on them. distract themselves from feelings of self-harm (for example, counting to ten, waiting 15 minutes, saying "NO!" or "STOP!," practicing breathing exercises, journaling, drawing, thinking about positive images, using ice and rubber bands, etc.)
- stop, think, and evaluate the pros and cons of self-injury.
- soothe themselves in a positive, non-injurious, way.
- practice positive stress management.
Evaluation by a mental health professional may assist in identifying and treating the underlying causes of self-injury. Feelings of wanting to die or kill themselves are reasons for adolescents to seek professional care emergently. A child and adolescent psychiatrist can also diagnose and treat the serious psychiatric disorders that may accompany self-injurious behavior.
http://www.familymanagement.com/facts/english/self_injury.html
As you will see. Cutting is a growing problem with increasingly younger children. I'm a mental health professional with nearly 15 years of experience. During the first seven years on my career, I was familiar with only one case of self injury. Since that time, I've literally seen dozens of cases, with the number increasing with every successive year. Read on, feel free to visit the links. Warning: some of the images may be shocking to some, but is necessary to fully grasp what is going on in our society today.
Here are some statistics regarding the changes in cutting over the decades:
United States
• Early 1980’s — 400 per 100,000 in population (Pattison & Kahan, 1983)
• Late 1980’s — 750 per 100,000 in population (Favazza, 1988)
• Late 1990’s —1000 per 100,000 in population (Favazza,1998)
• Mid 2000’s — An estimated 150,000 to 360,000 adolescents in the U.S. self-injure (National Association
of Secondary School Principals, 2004). Also data from the 2003 Massachusetts YRBS indicated that 18% of
high school students in Massachusetts reported having self-injured during the past year.
The Increased Prevalence of Self-Injury in the United States
Groups in Which Self-Injury Was Commonly Reported (1960-1990)
• Outpatients with serious emotional disturbance or mental illness
• Persons representing at psychiatric emergency rooms
• Seriously and persistently mentally ill persons in day treatment or partial hospitalization programs.
• Seriously and persistently mentally ill adults living in community based residential or supported housing programs
• Patients in short and long-term psychiatric units
• Youth in special education schools or residential programs
• Prison inmates
Note: These groups, of course, are not mutually exclusive. For example, individuals can be discharged from hospitals or prisons and become clients in residential or outpatient settings, or vice versa.
New Groups in Which Self-Injury is Now Commonly
Occurring (1990’s to Present)
• Youth in middle and high schools serving regular education students
• Young adults enrolled in colleges and universities
• Adults in the community at large
http://www.sprc.org/featured_resources/trainingandevents/disc_series/pdf/discussion10.pdf
Notice that there has been a sharp increase in the numbers of people self injuring since the onset of the emo fad? Again, emo is not the sole cause for these changes, but it is a significant factor, as the music and messages of the subculture openly promote self injury. Should it be a surprise that when the culture promotes it, that more people do it?
Young girls think self-harming is a normal way of managing stress
The “emo-culture,” a youth culture based on music which focuses on angst, is often joked about as a culture based on cutting. Because “emo-kids” are a group of angst-filled youth, cutting can seem like an easy way out of the present pain to them.
But cutting is not something to joke about. Aside from it being considered a “trend-thing” by some, it is a serious health issue. Aside from scarring, cutting could require hospitalization from over-bleeding or an infection. If one cuts with a friend and does not use separate tools then the risk of spreading the HIV virus exists.
Some people cut themselves as a way of inciting a reaction among others or as a way to gain “love.” Others cut to create guilt for those around them. For example, a girl might threaten to cut herself unless her boyfriend stays with her or unless a friend invites her to a party.
http://www.smdailyjournal.com/article_preview.php?id=57704
A girl from Roselle, whose screen name is As the Blood Runs Down, writes that she'll commit suicide by slashing her throat, she'll try 80 times, and she'll leave this as her suicide note: "Now there's simply one less heart to break."
All this on her blog on MySpace, a virtual meeting place for any kid with access to the Internet and the unofficial base for all kids who call themselves "emo," short for hard-core emotive.
Now emo is a subculture with a dress and drama all its own. According to kids, teachers, and therapists, it has become the latest cool thing in junior highs, where cool is everything.
Only some grown-ups and even older emo kids themselves worry that young teens and preteens might be in over their heads in a scene that's wrought with self-injury, prescription swapping and long hours venting their dark side on blogs that they forget can be read by anyone.
Someone who calls herself I Am the Happy Emo Girl Named Amaya!, whose bedtime is 9 p.m., by the way, writes in her blog, "i don't know who i am ... why don't you just end it, shoot me with ur gun or some (expletive). Bang. Bang. Im dead."
And then there's Emo Tim, whose blog shows video of his forearm, a lattice of red cuts. These words crawl beneath the blood-blotched arm: "I got a Boo-Boo!"
Check out MySpace _ a virtual hangout where teens glue themselves to the computer and hook up with kids far and wide _ and you'll find some 17,331 groups that identify themselves as "emo."
"It's a generation marked by promiscuity and disobedience under wraps," he said of his peers. "It's like the hair in front of their eyes shields the world from seeing the moral breakdown. Under the gentle swoop of the bangs lies a world of debauchery. Each kid tries to outdo each other, in a big game of `who can be the most emo.' It's one of those trying-so-hard-not-to-conform-that-they-all-end-up-looking-the-same situations.
As for the cutting, or self-injuring, that is one of the most worrisome parts of being emo, according to Lacocque, who has seen the behavior in both middle school and high school students. "There is something sexily eerie about cutting for people who don't feel their reality," he explained. For the most part, he said, some kids might be curious enough to try it once but then quickly decide it's not something they're interested in doing.
The danger, say child psychologists, is the child who decides to dabble once and makes a serious mistake.
"Typically, the intention is not to die," said Schubring. "The risk is always there."
One Schaumburg, Ill., mother of four, a woman who spends plenty of time listening in on preteen and teen conversations, chauffeuring her brood from here to there, is alarmed by how swiftly she has seen the lyrics of emo songs devolve from what she calls "bubblegummy" just a couple years ago to what she now sees as "seriously intense."
"It gets really scary when it's really cool to get yourself hospitalized," said the woman, who asked not to be named.
"And the real concern," she said, "is that you'd hate to see a kid who is depressed, who you blew off as, `Oh that.' And then something really bad happens."
http://www.tmcnet.com/usubmit/2006/06/12/1677341.htm
Another factor explaining the difficulty in researching this subject is the potential risk in surveying students about this subject. Asking adolescent students about this behavior can be psychologically harmful because it may have a “potentially suggestive effect” (Lieberman, 2004, p. 4). Some experts in this field refer to this as a “contagion factor,” which is a potential explanation for the growing rate of self-cutting behavior. The contagion factor is increasingly problematic because of the ease with which information is spread via the internet. One author believes that this phenomenon is particularly troublesome for school settings is because “self injury has a tendency to spread from one troubled adolescent to another. It’s a contagious behavior” (Galley, 2003, p. 14). It has been noted in some studies that self-harm cases have led to epidemics of self-harm in group settings such as hospitals, prisons, gangs, residential treatment, or dormitories (Farber, 1997). Similarly, it seems that in the school setting there is an “epidemic” of self-cutting taking place among high school and junior high students.
Some sites do, in fact, support self-cutters in coping and finding help, but others may “purposely glorify and support this behavior” (“Wounds,” 2004, p. 3). While there is great potential for the media to help, there is also great danger for the media to perpetuate the problem through “normalizing” the behavior and potentially furthering its contagion. As one group of authors say,” For parents, health care professionals and educators, it is important to be aware not only of this self-injury behavior, but also the influences—both good and bad—of the Internet and mass media” (“Wounds,” 2004, p.5).
http://www.luc.edu/socialwork/praxis/pdfs/praxis_article3.pdf
Of course there has been much speculation and rumour. It is said that all of the young people had had some contact between themselves prior to death, possibly through SMS. Much has been read into the fact that all of the suicides used hanging, even though this is the most common method used nationally. There is some evidence that all of the students identified themselves as being ‘Emo’ – that is that they thought of themselves as emotional or depressed, preferred mixing with their own group, and had particular preferences in music (post-punk, ‘emotive hardcore’, or heavy metal styles) and clothes (tartans, black, tight jeans, and the use of scarves), used eyeliner to darken the eye sockets, and combed their (sometimes greasy) hair in a particular fashion (usually down over one eye). Some in the community and in the media, on the basis of these connections and similarities, have raised the possibility of an agreement or a pact to die. There have also been suggestions that influences may not have been just personal, but rather that identifying with Emo culture may in itself influence toward suicidal behaviors. We should really begin by examining whether any subculture increases the risk for suicide. Although there is a paucity of research looking at this aspect of sub cultural groups, recent work suggests that compared with other subcultures, identification with being a Goth may be problematic. Robert Young and his colleagues (2006) from Glasgow in a longitudinal study
found that the lifetime risk for self-harm and for suicide attempts was significantly increased, with close to 50% of the young people giving a positive history. This of course does not mean that any particular Goth will ultimately suicide, but self-harm and suicide attempts are known to be factors along pathways to suicide, and are often used as proxy measures for suicide in program outcome research. It may be problematic to compare Goths and Emos, given that Emos become enraged with people who suggest they are similar to Goths. In fact one website exploring and explaining Emo culture has suggested a critical difference between the two groups – Emos hate themselves, while Goths hate everyone. If this hating the self is true, then it might be argued that Emos are at more risk of hurting the self than their Goth counterparts, so there could be some risk in identifying with Emo culture. Certainly (and while there is no formal research on this) the reported incidence of cutting behaviors is said to be high in the group, and a key feature of Emo culture.
http://www.auseinet.com/journal/vol5iss3/aejamh_53_abs.pdf
§ Music is central to youth culture.
§ Music is believed to influence youth culture more than any other form of media.
§ Young people use music to define and express their identity and to form values (Seelow, 1996).
“I began to appreciate music as…a place where I could be accepted, a place with no rules and no judgments.” Marilyn Manson.
§ Young people’s specific subcultural identity is linked to specific musical styles, from heavy metal to hip-hop (Seelow, 1996).
§ Preferences for particular styles of music have been implicated in higher incidences of suicide and self-harm, however there has been little empirical
research examining this link.
§ Parents of young people who have committed suicide have unsuccessfully attempted to sue music groups for influencing their adolescent’s death
(Martin, 1998).
§ Some musical subcultures thought to be linked to suicide and self-harm include: Country (Stack & Gundlach, 1992); Blues (Stack, 2000), Heavy Metal
(Martin, Clarke, & Pearce, 1993; Scheel & Westefeld, 1999; Stack, Gundlach, & Reeves, 1994) (see summaries of research linking these types of music to suicide, below), and the
more recent “Emo” (“Emotive Hardcore”) music (for which there is no current research evidence).
§ Young people are drawn to certain styles of music because the music reflects their attitudes and moods, and therefore, perhaps some music
“nurtures suicidal tendencies already present in the subculture” (Stack et al., 1994, p15).
§ It is difficult to establish a causal link between music preference and suicide or self-harm; a) because of the difficulty controlling for the myriad
of other risk factors associated with both suicidal behaviour and music preference (Scheel & Westefeld, 1999), b) studies are largely cross-sectional and exploratory, and c) it is
difficult to measure quantitatively the prevalence of preference for specific styles of music.
§ However, knowledge of music preference may be useful to identify at-risk young people.
Causal Explanations of Psychosocial Disorders in Young People
Music preference may be one of a myriad of aspects of 'youth culture' offered as explanations for the development of suicidal behaviours in young people, merely on the basis of observed
associations between the two. More broadly, there has been much speculation, but few empirical studies, of the contribution of various sociocultural changes to the increase in suicidal
behaviour and other psychosocial disorders (including substance abuse, depression, eating disorders, anxiety disorders, conduct disorder, criminal behaviours) in the last few decades. A
substantial effort to address this question was made in Europe in the early 1990s: Rutter and Smith (1995) explored a range of explanations for the rise in psychosocial disorders in
youth. They identified immense problems in testing hypotheses in this field. In summary, they provided ten major conclusions about the causes of psychosocial disorders (including suicidal
behaviours) in young people:
As living conditions in societies have improved, levels of disorder have increased.
Conversely, increasing affluence, per se, does not account for the overall increase in psychosocial disorders.
Although unemployment creates individual risk, a high level of unemployment within a society does not explain rises in disorder.
Worsening physical health does not account for the increase in psychosocial disorders. As physical health improves, psychosocial disorders also become more frequent.
There is evidence to suggest that increasing levels of family discord and lack of parental support and involvement have played a role in the rise in psychosocial disorders at both
individual and community levels.
“…The changing pattern of transitions in adolescence and early adult life may cause risks associated, for example, with a growth of youth culture, a possible increasing
isolation of adolescents from adults,…earlier engagement in sexual relationships,… increase(s) in psychosocial stressors, (and) an increase in peer group
influence…”.
Exposure to mass media does not largely account for the rise in psychosocial disorders. More likely, mass media reflects changing attitudes in society and thus, may augment the effects of
social change.
Although changes in moral values may be connected with increases in psychosocial disorder, there is no research evidence to suggest that there is a causal link between moral decline and
increasing psychosocial disorder.
Increased expectations to succeed, and the difficulties that young people experience in meeting these expectations may play a role in increased psychosocial disorders.
The evidence suggests that, to some extent, causal explanations are different for different disorders. For example, increased alcohol consumption is associated with increases in violent
crime, and the increased availability and misuse of alcohol and other drugs has played a role in the rise of suicide and suicidal behaviour.
http://www.chmeds.ac.nz/research/suicide/music_youth_subculture_aug_2006_2.pdf
As you can see, there is clearly something going on in terms of societal change and the documented rise in self injury. There seems to be some confusion as to the causes to
the problems that we are seeing today. There are a multitude of factors, including the emo fad, to consider. When we put all of the increases,in self injury and emo in a time
line, there does seem to be a link between the two. While it would be foolish to blame all of the issues covered on this site on emo alone, it's pretty obviously a link. If
anything, this points out the need for researchers to address the relationship between subcultures and these behaviors. Perhaps then, a full understanding between media messages and
social behavior can be fully understood.