A Bright Red Scream: Self-mutilation and the Language of Pain (A Virago V) [Paperback]

'An important addition to psychological literature'

'This beautifully written, sensitively told account of people who mutilate themselves is filled with riveting stories...

An investigation of why so many people deliberately hurt themselves and what can be done to help them. The illness "outed" on a global scale when Princess Diana admitted hurting herself deliberately, and continues to be practised mainly by middle-class women who start in their teens and self-harm throughout their lives. Most cutters are women who have been emotionally, sexually or physically abused as children, but Marilee Strong's research shows that self-mutilation also appears in other groups. There are powerful first-person stories, in which cutters describe their ritualistic methods and somewhat addictive cravings for seeing their own blood. Though research is in its infancy, therapists say there are now promising treatments - from medication to intensive psychotherapy - for the millions of "cutters". Strong reveals what the afflicted and those close to them can do to start a process of healing.

Based on over 5 yrs of research & interviews:
I wrote this book to provide both hope and help to people who self-injure. No one need suffer in silence, believing that they are alone in their pain. There are ways to heal both the internal and external wounds. I am grateful to the fifty-plus self-injurers from across the U.S. (and in the U.K., Canada, and Australia) who so bravely shared their stories with me and a like number of researchers and experts who treat self-injury whose insights helped me understand this very complex phenomenon. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Marilee Strong, an award-winning journalist known for her groundbreaking 1993 article on self-mutilation, is the recipient of a Pulitzer Fellowship for her work on childhood victims of war trauma.