Self- harm is a coping mechanism meaning people self-harm as a way to get them to focus on something other than their emotional pain. When you are hurting physically, you don't have time to deal with your emotional pain so you push your emotional pain off to the side. That only lasts so long though. Your body is like a volcano. The more you try to cover whatever it is that is causing you pain, eventually you will reach a breaking point and snap. When that snap happens, your in real danger. Some people have an emotional break down, some self-harm even more than they already do and some even try to commit suicide and succeed. You can't stop self-harming overnight. It doesn't happen that way. There is a reason why people do it and most of the time it's because something happened and the thing that happened is too painful to deal with. In the end, in order to quit you need to confront the issue you are avoiding and it can be anything: death of a loved one, a break up, a car accident, abuse, abandonment, witnessing a ******, being kidnapped, miscarriage, divorce, moving around a lot, bullying, near death experience. All these things can cause a person to self-harm and a lot of the time these people aren't suicidal, they just want relief. To get relief they need to confront the issue. Confronting the issue is scary. By confronting the issue they are reliving their traumatic experience and they are forced to feel things and talk about things that they have been hiding through self-harm. Those who self-harm also need to learn other ways to dealing with their pain which can be hard to do especially if you were raised in an environment where violence, self hate, anger and abuse were how you dealt with your emotional problems and if you have been self-harming for a long time, it's very difficult to let go of something that has been your comfort blanket for years. It's strange that something so painful can be so comforting to people. Self-harm is something that is hard to understand unless you have gone through it yourself. It is an issue that needs to be addressed. You can't make somebody stop doing it. Just like drugs you can't make a person stop their addiction unless they want to. What people don't want to see is that self-harm can **** someone. All it takes is one wrong move with a razor or whatever you self harm with and your done. If that truth doesn't scare anybody into taking this rising issue seriously, I don't know what will.