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This phenomenon is not limited to Ivy League schools.

Reed Stoddard, director of the BYU-Idaho Counseling Center, sees about 20 students each year who cut or otherwise harm their bodies using such items as scissors or razor blades. Stoddard said that self-injury is not usually a cry for attention or a suicide attempt, as some believe.

“Most often, it’s a way to try to regulate difficult emotions. They [students who injure their bodies] are overwhelmed with feelings they don’t know how to process, and sometimes cutting can help to relieve some of that stress,” Stoddard said.

In a recent article Stoddard wrote for the BYU-I Perspective, he included an 18-year-old BYU-I student’s experience with self-injury.

“I wanted to feel physical pain and know that I was still alive, seeing blood and feeling the stinging sensation would do it…I wanted to sit and cry and cry, I wanted that to be my release instead of cutting. But the crying was not happening. I wanted to call someone, but there was no one I felt I could call, no one I wanted to talk to online. So I sat in my room and ran the scissors over the cut,” the student said.

The feelings experienced by this student are not uncommon in those who injure themselves.

“For patients who feel distanced from reality, isolated or dehumanized, the sight of their own blood can jolt them back to reality. It reassures them that they are alive, intact and have personal boundaries. Patients like this will say, ‘I feel real again,’” according to the book Bodily Harm, written by Karen Conterio and Wendy Lader.

Most people who practice self-injury do it as a coping mechanism.

Brandon Creer, a school psychologist in St. Anthony, has counseled high school students facing such issues for five years and has worked as a psychologist for 20 years.

“To [those who injure themselves] it’s not pain, it’s a release. They have all these feelings of pain or anger built up inside and don’t feel safe enough directing them in the direction from which they came,” Creer said.

A 15-year-old girl in St. Anthony who cut herself to escape her emotions expressed her feelings to Creer, who treated her for self-injury, in this way.

“I don’t cry, I bleed. I don’t scream, I cut,” she said.

Helping these people to stop hurting themselves is a long and difficult process.

Creer said if a person knows someone who hurts himself or herself, that person should first tell him that they know what he is doing.

“Tell them, ‘I don’t understand your pain, but I understand that you’re hurting and I’m worried about you and want you to get some help,’” Creer said.

If they refuse to get help, their friend should talk to a counselor for them and make an appointment.

Usually a counselor will meet with someone at least once a week or more, depending on the severity of their emotional trauma, and teach them to express their emotions in a positive way.

Stoddard added that the Counseling Center has a group that teaches skills for controlling emotions, and it can be helpful in treatment for self-injurers. He has also sometimes prescribed mood stabilizers or medicines for depression, depending on the case, but they are used in combination with counseling.