Living with a Thousand Cuts: Self‐Cutting, Agency, and Mental Illness among Adolescents

Abstract

The phenomenon of self‐cutting has attracted increasing attention in scholarly and popular venues. Most of the literature is written from clinical, historical, or psychometric standpoints, and what has been missing is an ethnographic understanding of self‐cutting as a lived experience. The present discussion begins to fill this gap drawing on data from our project on adolescent psychiatric inpatients in the American Southwest, during which we followed these youths and their families for between one and two years as they moved from the hospital back to their homes or to other treatment facilities. Of the 47 young people (22 females and 25 males) who participated in this project, 27 or 57% had cut themselves at some point. Focusing on illustrations from case studies that highlight their cutting experience, we examine self‐cutting as the cultural and experiential locus of a crisis of agency in the relation between body and world and thus as the enactment of a fundamental human process in the context of individual experience.

#Online harms or benefits? An ethnographic analysis of the positives and negatives of peer‐support around self‐harm on social media

“…Previous literature shows self‐harm to potentially have multiple embodied meanings, differing between people (Csordas & Jenkins, 2018), and a recent analysis of YouTube videos focused on self‐harm recovery uncovered multiplicity also in understandings of self‐harm (Ryan‐Vig, Gavin & Rodham, 2019). Our data sets, in contrast, contain little discussion of the functions and meanings of self‐harm, whilst instead illustrating a clear mutual recognition that it has meaning.…”

Loneliness, adolescence, and global mental health: Soledad and structural violence in Mexico

“…Likewise, the profound influence of poverty requires far greater attention as such conditions disproportionately affect women (Patel, 2005). Also among adolescent populations (including the case study) is the increasing commonality of the practice of self-cutting, particularly among girls, as a “cultural and experiential locus of a crisis of agency in the relation between body and world and thus as the enactment of a fundamental human process in the context of individual experience” (Csordas & Jenkins 2018: 206).…”

“…Such is certainly the case in the present ethnographic case for Tijuanese adolescents, where lack of friends at school or bullying may potentially conduce to feelings of depression, isolation, and loneliness (Lasgaard, Goossens, & Elkli, 2011;Heinrich & Gullone, 2006;Asher & Paquette, 2003;Larson, 1999). In turn, anthropological analysis of adolescence has been examined as a period constitutive of possibilities for identity-making and cultural and social integration (Csordas & Jenkins, 2018;Burton, 1997). The developmental continuity between periods defined as childhood and adolescents (which are culturally and historically variable) is not, however, distinct.…”

“What I couldn’t do before, I can do now”: Narrations of agentic shifts and psychological growth by young adults reporting discontinuation of self-injury since adolescence

“…The narrated experiences of individuals who exhibited such behaviours in their past could be more stressful and chaotic than the experiences of those described in this study. Moreover, their self-injury could in itself have been constructed as an agentic expression, such as a means of re-establishing control in chaotic conditions (Donskoy & Stevens, 2013 ; Wadman et al, 2018 ) or reinstating the idea of an agentic self through harm to visible areas of the body (Csordas & Jenkins, 2018 ). Thus, while the results have limited generalizability to the entire population of individuals that self-injure while experiencing significant distress and trauma, the broad concepts are likely transferable to young adults who have experienced stress and mental illness in adolescence but currently perceive themselves as flourishing.…”

“…This exploration must also consider context, as an individual’s efficacy can be both limited and reinforced by current life circumstances, such as social structures and fortuitous events (Evans, 2007 ). Earlier work has found that life circumstances perceived to be restricting agency, such as institutionalization or foster care relocation, are associated with NSSI engagement (Donskoy & Stevens, 2013 ; Wadman et al, 2018 ); these findings are sometimes explained as that cutting or other methods of self-injury can reinstate a sense of control in otherwise chaotic life situations (Csordas & Jenkins, 2018 ). Moreover, a content analysis by Rissanen et al ( 2013 ) showed that changing social networks and life events (e.g., starting therapy, finding a significant other or confidant) are important factors in ceasing self-cutting.…”