"In the class, our daughter (13) to carve some girls to vent frustrations or other feelings abreact. Also it died once, as her pet, and she was desperate and sad. Me this behavior is very upsetting for her. Is something harmless or a warning sign?“

If the daughter or the son to hurt himself, a lot of parents once shocked and feel at the same time overwhelmed with the Situation. Ask yourself how you want to classify the behavior of your child. Is to classify the behavior as harmless or indicates that it is a mental illness?

There are many different reasons for self-injurious behavior. Not always a mental illness is behind it. Many young people offend once myself (about 18 percent). Some do it out of curiosity, because you have to know that the best friend or the best friend has already done it once. Other it a try, because maybe it was just the topic in the classroom, or the media. If self-injury occurs behavior without suicidal intent, that is, without the intent to seriously harm, once, this is no reason for concern.

Act is important and Should be shown self-injurious behaviour is repeated, it is important to act to. Affected adolescents often have difficulties in Emotion and stress regulation. In stress conditions, add self-injury to be approximately, with strong aversive emotions. Repeated non-suicidal self-injurious behavior occurs more often together with other mental disorders, such as depressive disorders, anxiety disorders, or Borderline personality disorder.

parents should be alert if you observe changes in the behavior of your child. Some young people no longer go to the swimming pool or wearing any short-sleeved T-Shirts or pants more, arms or legs to obstruct, to which the self-injury would be visible.

are you Looking for the conversation with your child. Try to ask how frequently the self-injuring occurs behavior, when, why, and how their child Self-injures. To guess: Is your child so badly that it no longer wants to live?

If your child has repeated self-injurious behavior, take it seriously the Problem and can apply directly to a communitybased child and youth psychotherapists or child and adolescent psychiatrist.

Verena Pflug child and youth psychotherapist and works at the research and treatment center for mental health (FBZ) of the Ruhr-University of Bochum.

This article was written by Verena Pflug

*The post "a therapist explains: From this Moment on is cracks among the young is dangerous" is published by Family.de. Contact with the executives here.