On http://www.nwdaily.co.uk New Woman magazine's website, it states that:
"NW Magazine was recently, voted the PPA Magazine of the Year. And deservedly so, as NW magazine is one of the biggest, brightest, best-selling women's magazine's currently to be found on your newsagents shelves."
Now what sort of bright magazine would, in an article titled "Are you suffering from Boyfriend Envy" (In December issue 07) in a box at the end of the article titled "'DON'T FANCY YOURS MUCH!'", include a photograph of troubled actor Owen Wilson with a caption next to it saying "He'd dazzle everybody with his wit, but you could never trust him with your razor blades"
Now to me this is not the sort of thing "the biggest, brightest, best-selling women's magazine" should be producing. This is irresponsible, naive journalism at the very least.
I have made no secret of that fact I used to be manic depressive, self-harmed and on more than one occasion tried to take my own life. I was diagnosed with depression when I was 15, manic depressive at age 19 and self-harmed for around 2 years, however I am not ashamed of my illness.
According to the 2001 census 1.7% of 16-19 year-olds, and 2.2% of 20-24 year-olds or about 127,000 have suffered from a depressive episode.
Further research conducted as part of the national inquiry in to self-harm called “truth hurts” also found that 1 in 15 young people (aged 11-25) have self-harmed.
A survey conducted in 2002 where 6020 young people were questioned called 'Deliberate self-harm in adolescents: self report survey in schools in England' showed that females are more likely to self-harm than males.
So why is a female orientated magazine aimed at young women making light of something as painful and upsetting as self-harm?
A lot of people already find it hard to discuss mental health problems, including self-harm which makes it a “scary” taboo subject. However with the media making sick jokes about these issues, they are surely making the problem worse?
If I put myself in that dark place I found myself when I was self-harming and depressive, then read the comment made by New Woman I immediately feel belittled. It feels as if someone is saying “No-one would want this guy because he has mental health issues” so I think “No-one would want me either because I have the same issue as him…”
This is a very scary place for someone to put themselves in, the last thing a depressed young woman or indeed man needs to hear is that someone in the same frame of mind as them is unwanted, mocked and isolated from society.
I have never felt so alone then when I was self-harming, which may sound selfish as I had amazing support from my friends and family. However what I refer to as my “demons inside” were telling me that those people didn’t care, it was me against everyone else and it was always going to be like that.
Even now when I have had a bad day I will find a little voice in my head saying self-harm will make it that little bit more tolerable, but I can say with all sincerity that it doesn’t. Not for the long term anyway.
The pain and absolute hell I went through made me who I am today, it taught me that it is ok to cry in front of your friends and family, that it is ok to rely on other people and not always be “happy happy”.
So for anyone who has or does self-harm the advice I can give you is to talk to someone. We need as a nation to talk to each other more about problems such as this and not be ashamed of them. People may accuse you of being attention seeking, but they don’t know what is going on inside your head so tell them… Their accusations (in my case anyway) just highlighted their own insecurities and by trying to blame me as being attention seeking they were trying to deal with what they saw happening to me… they were scared too.
I hope this helps someone, but at least it is out there now. I am not going to be taboo about self-harm or mental health as a journalist so why should everyone else?
A few useful links:
http://www.selfharmuk.org/docs/The_truth_about_self_harm.pdf - Truth Hurts
http://www.youngminds.org.uk/ - Young Minds Organisation
http://www.selfharm.org.uk/default.aspa - Young people and Self-Harm
http://www.mind.org.uk/ - Mental Health Charity
http://www.nshn.co.uk/ - The National Self-Harm Network
http://www.samaritans.org/ - The Samaritans
