Shera was a cutter. Millions injure themselves There are roughly 1.9 million cutters , or people who intentionally harm themselves much like my roommate Shera, in America. And one source says that 750 out of every 100,000 people in the United States practice some form of self-injury . But despite what the recent glut of stories about women who cut themselves, cutting is not on an epidemic level among young women, stresses Laura Mason, Ph.D., director of the Psychology Clinic at University of California at Berkeley. If you feel the urge to injure yourself right now, click here.
Many cutters report that when they harm themselves, they feel relief rather than physical pain.
As the statistics show, bumblebee is far from alone. There are thousands of Websites with stories, poems, drawings and advice about where to get help for cutters, and there's many helpful books and articles that self-injurers can turn to. The people who most commonly engage in cutting and self-injury are girls and women between the ages of 13 and 30. This is a time when many of us are coming to grips with identity and body-image issues. And these years can get tough.