Sunday, December 8, 2013

Cutting and Self-Harm: Warning Signs and Treatment 3

Staying Safe continued...

Parents can help by providing emotional support, helping identify early warning signs, helping kids distract themselves, lowering the child's stress level, and providing supervision at critical times, Rosen says. "But a parent can't do it for them. It takes a certain level of resource to be able to stop cutting, and many kids don't have those resources. They need to stay in therapy until they get to that point."
Self-harm is not a problem that kids simply outgrow, Rosen adds. "Kids who develop this behavior have fewer resources for dealing with stress, fewer coping mechanisms. As they develop better ways of coping, as they get better at self-monitoring, it's easier to eventually give up this behavior. But it's much more complicated than something they will outgrow."


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