Students band together to raise awareness about self-harming behavior

Self-injury, while widely misunderstood by parents and other adults, can be a symptom that results from depression. Some teens have started using techniques such as branding, cutting and embedding as a means of “release” from every day stress.

However, students from the McLaughlin High School in South Dakota are coming forward with their stories of self-harming, reports the Bismarck Tribune.

“You have to be in the mind of that person to understand cutting,” Samantha Cosay, 18, told the news source. “When I was watching the blood, it calmed me down.”

School officials are helping these students create a project that aims to help raise awareness about the negative aspects of self-injury. The district set aside money for the production of two public health videos that star individuals who recently suffered from these behaviors. Furthermore, they also wrote the script as well as designed the visuals and sounds.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, nearly 472,000 people have visited a healthcare facility after a self-inflicted injury occurred.