That really is a good question. I guess it is a scary thing, and people who are not familar with it don't know what it is and what it means. A lot of them tend to assume that there is a connection between SI and suicide. Self-injurers are usually self-conscious about it and secretive, and it seems that people generally just don't want to talk about it. Just that in and of itself makes it more of an unknown, and people are afraid of the unknown, and of things that are different or that they don't understand.

Other self-destructive behaviors like alcohol and drug abuse, compulsive gambling, among others, are more out in the open and better recognized. They are not so far outside the realm of common experience. Even eating disorders have started to be relatively well understood and accepted by much of the general population.

I have been noticing that self-injury also is starting to be talked about more, and more people have heard of it and are prepared to deal with it than used to be the case. About 15 years ago, although I was a self-injurer, I didn't know what it was and had never heard of it, and when I mentioned to a therapist that I had tried to cut my wrists and thought I was pathetic because all I managed were scratches, he seemed to have no clue how to deal with it. He didn't say anything, but later confronted me with it, indicating that there was something that didn't add up and he essentially didn't believe me. Now we hear about SI on television shows, and you won't find a therapist that doesn't know something about it. Thre are books about it, and lots of information and discussion available on the internet. The topic came up in a psychology class I took recently. Of the six of us there that day at my location (distance class), four knew someone (a friend or a sister) who was a self-injurer, and one (me) was a self-injurer. One whose sister self-injures did seem a little uncomfortable with the topic, although she was the one who brought it up, but the rest were more curious than anything else, and wanted to understand. It is more prevalent than I would have ever guessed before. One statistic I have seen indicated that one in a hundred people self injure. So in a small town with about 6000 people, like where I live, there are probably about 60 self-injurers. I think that must be about right, as I know a few of them.

So, I think that maybe the taboo is starting to lift as the information age makes it easier for more people to get the facts about things that never used to be discussed before.

<font color=orange>"If a light beckons to you, follow it. If it leads you into the quagmire, you'll probably find your way out of it again; but if you don't follow it, you'll be plagued for the rest of your life by the thought that perhaps it was your star." Friedrich Hebbet</font color=orange>