Apparently 22-year-old Dominique Fisher met 24-year-old Wayne Robinson at a Blackpool club. The two did lines together and agreed to meet up the next night, where they allegedly hooked up, did more drugs, drank a lot, and, respectively, passed out and carved name, patterns with a "Stanley knife." According to the ever-reliable Daily Mail, "Mr Robinson woke to find his body decorated with a star on his back, 'Dominique' written on his upper right arm, and slash marks on his left arm and shoulder." Upon seeing which, he freaked out and left.

She accused him of taking stuff for her apartment; he told the cops she'd carved on him. The judge made the determination that both young people were completely irresponsible and that Fisher has issues. As a result, she was found guilty of a single charge of "unlawful wounding" and walked free.

Said his honor,

"I'm quite satisfied in the time that followed in your flat both of you had a great deal to drink and took other substances, including Valium, and both of you were in no fit state to be doing anything... If you persist in drinking too much and taking drugs, strange things happen such as happened in this case and must not happen again."

There is something so elemental and primitive about the act of marking another person that such stories always arouse interest: it's no coincidence that Ashley Todd chose to mark herself with a carving (the infamous backwards B) when she was trying to arouse outrage. As in the case of Todd, and Fisher, the act of carving is seen as a symptom of real disturbance, surely because of the inherent violence, the permanence, perhaps the uncomfortable inversions of romantic tropes like initials on trees. While we are aware of cutting as an act of self-violence, it's shocking to be confronted with the act in a form we can't ignore. Maybe on some level, too, we are horrified to think of mistakes - bad decisions, regretted nights, things done under the influence — which we'd choose to regret, being forever memorialized. I'm sure this guy is.

Woman Who Carved Her Name Into Lover's Arm During Drug-Fuelled Fling Walks Free From Court [Daily Mail]

Last month, Dr. William Shiels, the chief of radiology at Nationwide Children's Hospital in Columbus, Ohio, presented evidence of what he says is an increase in the number of self-injurers embedding sharp objects under their skin, showing x-rays of patients who had inserted objects such as paper clips, staples, glass, and even chunks of crayon. This led to media reports on the "new trend" of self-embedding, and now Shiels is lobbying to have "Self-Embedding Disorder" included in the next edition of the the American Psychiatric Association's Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM), the bible of psychiatric disorders.

But this has raised several questions: Should self-embedding be classified as its own condition separate from cutting? And is self-injury itself a disorder, or is it always just a symptom of a larger mental problem? Though the media jumped on self-embedding as a new practice, doctors say that embedding is a known method of self-injury. There are accounts of self-injury and embedding in the earliest known medical literature, and yet doctors still say there isn't enough research on self-injury and there have been no studies on embedding. It may have something to do with the fact that self-injury has always been seen as something "silly girls" do. "The early writing on this was of the tone that this was just another lunatic, hysterical female behavior," Joan Jacobs Brumberg, social historian and professor of human development at Cornell University.

Classifying self-embedding or self-injury as a specific disorder is a double edged sword. On the one hand, inclusion in the DSM would make the conditions easier to diagnose and treat. It would also probably lead to more funding for research and make obtaining insurance coverage easier. Even the media hype over the "new" medical disorders can help make people aware that self-injury is a "real" problem, not just something "silly" that girls do.

The danger is that defining self-industry or embedding as one neatly-packaged disorder can oversimplify the issue. People who self-injure usually say they do it as a way to cope with stress, but the specific reasons vary widely. As anyone who has self-injured, or been close to someone who self-injures knows, each person's motivations for doing it are complex and varied. Some say it's about control, others say it lets them feel release, and some are seeking a euphoric feeling, but in all cases boiling someone's mental issues down to a few bullet points and packaging it as the "hot new trend" in medical disorders isn't likely to help.

Why She Cuts: One Woman's Battle With Self Injury [Newsweek]

[Image via Flickr.]

Personnel at Nationwide Children's Hospital in Columbus, Ohio, report extracting 52 foreign objects that 10 teenage girls deliberately embedded in their arms, hands, feet, ankles and necks over the last three years, including needles, staples, wood, stone, glass, pencil lead and a crayon. One patient had inserted 11 objects, including an unfolded metal paper clip more than 6 inches long.

Good Christ. Although the Trib reports that 13-24% of high school students deliberately injure themselves at least once, they do emphasize that embedding is an incredibly extreme version of this behavior and that "All the cases in the Ohio study involved girls living in foster homes, group homes or mental health facilities. Many had experienced or witnessed physical or sexual abuse, and most had been diagnosed with depression, anxiety or other mental health problems." Even so: we will not be able to look at a paper clip the same way again.

[Image Center For Parent/Youth Understanding]

Radiologists Uncover, Label New Teen Affliction [Chicago Tribune]

Earlier: Why Are Cutters Called Silly Girls?

Hot geeky girls are a hot new trend, replete with a reality show and a spoofy beauty pageant and highly dubious sounding data such as:

Even women gamers far outnumber men ages 25 to 34, according to a 2006 study by the Consumer Electronics Association.

Oh, sure, find me a game that simulates cutting and cramps and vomiting up the wine you drank forming emotional attachments to horrible jerks and I will believe there is fucking gender parity here.

Revenge Of The Nerdettes [Newsweek]
Self-Cutting Linked To Risky Teen Sex, Study Shows [CBS News]

When you're suffering from emotional pain — when your heart, mind and soul hurt — and you can't express it, when it stays bottled up because you don't have a method, place or medium of release, cutting can seem like a great idea. Like bleeding is breathing. Like you're letting it all out. Or sometimes you're so numb to the world you're desperate to feel. (Ever see a movie called Fight Club?) Believe me, I'm not advocating self-harm. But I understand it. The Times notes, "Self-injury can become addictive. Experts theorize that it may be reinforced by the release in the brain of opioidlike endorphins that result in a natural high and emotional relief." And honestly? From ear piercing to tattoos and nose jobs, humans have a history of modifying and inflicting harm on ourselves. (Not to mention: Binge eating, drug use, drinking, sun tanning and smoking.) So I call bullshit on the implication that the Internet is going to make a teenager cut herself. Nevermind the "I wish my grass was Emo so it would cut itself" T-shirts. There was self-harm before the age of MySpace and there always will be. Luckily, there are also therapists, doctors, and people who know when they need help.

All too often, if someone asks, "How are you?" we reply, "I'm fine", never letting on what kind of rage, sadness or depression boils inside us. If the Internet is a place where people who self-harm can vocalize and discover they're not alone, is that so bad? The girl in the striped socks was wearing her emotional damage on her sleeve — is there any harm in that, so to speak?

The Growing Wave Of Teenage Self-Injury [NY Times]

How bad does a relationship have to be to get branded as "negative"? The researchers at the University of Washington chose a topic that both parent and child said was a "serious issue." The most common area of conflict was chores. Mother and child then discussed the sticky subject for 10 minutes, while assistants recorded and coded the conversation. According to Beauchaine, "You would think that they would be civil to each other in this kind of situation, but many of these topics were hot and within five minutes some of our subjects were arguing with each other."

"Once self-harming behavior starts it is difficult to stop," Beauchaine added, "So you want to prevent this behavior before it starts." But is every parent of a troubled girl supposed to get her serotonin levels checked just in case the young woman might start up with a razor? That doesn't sound practical. Lots of mothers and daughters have arduous relationships: how can you know when it's veering into truly dangerous territory?

Mother-Daughter Conflict, Low Serotonin Level May Be Deadly Combination [Science Daily]

In fact, recent research shows that children from affluent homes — where the income is more than $127,000 a year — are three times more likely to suffer anxiety and depression than ordinary teenagers and cutting is one of the ways anxious or depressed feelings can manifest themselves in adolescents.

For Tor, it only got worse as she got older. By the time she went to college, she was burning herself with cigarettes and punching walls, and in her second year of schooling, she was admitted to the hospital some 20 times. And although Tor is now doing better — she says she can't remember the last time she cut herself — why is it that even though 1 in 15 young people in the UK are harming themselves, parents like Tor's think it's not that big of a deal? Dr. Petra Boynton, a lecturer in health services research, says cutting "isn't always taken seriously. I've heard teachers talking about 'silly' girls who cut themselves."

According to Dr. Andrew McCulloch of the Mental Health Foundation, many young people grow out of self-harm. But, he warns, "If you have a child who is already self-motivated, be careful — surely you want your child to be well, rather than in a particular school?" And even though research shows that there's no significant difference in frequency of cutting between genders, why do we hear more about girls harming themselves? And why do people dare to call a girl who's cut herself "silly"?

Self-Harm: 'I Cut Myself To Feel Better' [Telegraph]