Researchers at Cornell and Princeton Universities found that 17 percent of student participants had engaged in self-injurious behavior -- which includes cutting, burning and any self-inflected injury not aimed at suicide -- at some point in their lives and that 70.8 percent of this group of respondents have engaged in the behavior at least twice. Dr. Mark Reed, director of Dartmouth Counseling and Health Resources, said that these statistics were not shocking and would most likely be similar among students at the College.
The study on self-injurious behavior, conduct abbreviated as SIB in medical literature, was published in the June issue of Pediatrics and is the largest study to date on self-injury among college students, with 2,875 survey responses.
Reed said that it is important to distinguish between students who have engaged in SIB one time and students who do it habitually.
"I could see how some people would see this as horrifying," Reed said. "Once I read further into the article, it fit more with what we're seeing." Only 7.3 percent of the study's participants had engaged in SIB in the past year.
According to Reed, no statistics on the topic have been collected at Dartmouth. When a student begins counseling at Dick's House, inquiries about SIB are part of the screening process because they can be indicative of other disorders, but SIB itself is not a disorder. Reed said the Counseling and Human Development Department at Health Services counsels just over a thousand undergraduate and graduate students each year.
The June study, titled "Self-injurious Behaviors in a College Population," reported that 40 percent of SIB respondents said that no one knew about their behavior. Only 21.4 percent said they had told a mental health professional and only 3.2 percent said they had told a physician.
"Plenty of students share and I'm sure that plenty of them don't, and I'm sure that plenty of them don't even make it here," Reed said.
Dr. John Turco, director of Health Services, agreed that statistics at Dartmouth would most likely be similar to those found at Princeton and Cornell. He said that Dartmouth does not have much in the way of self-injury education currently but he said that Dartmouth administrators, professors and undergraduate advisors should be educated about self-injurious behavior.
"I think it's obviously something that's becoming an issue," he said.
Turco added that incoming Dartmouth students receive a pamphlet about alcohol, drugs, eating disorders and other health concerns but SIB is not currently discussed in the handout.
"I don't think we mention cutting but it wouldn't be a bad idea," he said, adding that he wants to educate the campus because he said that people often assume SIB is a suicide attempt and therefore overreact instead of understanding the actual causes.
One Dartmouth student, who wished to remain anonymous, has been treated for depression for three years and has been cutting herself since her junior year of high school. She agreed that education is necessary because it would "help the friends of cutters understand and not freak out," though she does not think education would stop a person from engaging in SIB.
Dr. Greg Eells, associate director for counseling and psychological services at Cornell, said he thinks Cornell does a "great job" of providing self-injury education, but said that people could be made more aware of long-term consequences and of better-coping strategies.
"You could always do more," he said.
Eells said that he sees self-injurious behavior as an upcoming field of research and said that the June study is an example of growing interest in the field. One of the study's researchers, Janis Whitlock, has already conducted other studies on the topic, including the role of websites in SIB. Cornell also plans to host an international conference on the subject.
The reasons for engaging in self-injurious behavior vary. Reed said that the satisfaction gained from hurting oneself can be likened to the rush associated with binging and purging and that patients who engage in SIB may or may not be suffering from a mental disorder.
The student who said education would benefit the Dartmouth campus said she cuts herself because she finds it gratifying to see her own blood.
"I cut myself because I feel so horrible and so sad but there's no evidence of it and the physical pain makes me calmer," she said.
She said she was not surprised that 17 percent of students surveyed at Cornell and Princeton reported SIB at one point and said she would have guessed that an even higher percentage of college students had engaged in such behavior at some point.
"A lot of people I know have at least tried it before," she said.
The Dartmouth sophomore said that her therapist knows about her cutting and said that although psychiatrists are often concerned about infection and stitches, her therapists have not tried to stop her from cutting because they know it will not cure the depression that is behind the behavior. They instead want to focus on the primary problem, she said.
"They understand that it's a manifestation of depression and if you were to fix the depression it would go away," she said. "They know it's a coping method."