According to the Mayo Clinic self-harm is defined as:

The act of deliberately harming your own body, such as cutting or burning yourself. It’s typically not meant as a suicide attempt. Rather, this type of self-injury is a harmful way to cope with emotional pain, intense anger and frustration.

While self-injury may bring a momentary sense of calm and a release of tension, it’s usually followed by guilt and shame and the return of painful emotions. Although life-threatening injuries are usually not intended, with self-injury comes the possibility of more-serious and even fatal self-aggressive actions.

The National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI) elaborates:

Self-harm is not a mental illness, but a behavior that indicates a lack of coping skills. Several illnesses are associated with it, including borderline personality disorder, depression, eating disorders, anxiety or posttraumatic distress disorder. Self-harm occurs most often during the teenage and young adult years, though it can also happen later in life. Those at the most risk are people who have experienced trauma, neglect or abuse.

For instance, if a person grew up in an unstable family, it might have become a coping mechanism. If a person binge drinks or does drugs, he is also at greater risk of self-injury, because alcohol and drugs lower self-control. The urge to hurt yourself may start with overwhelming anger, frustration or pain. When a person is not sure how to deal with emotions, or learned as a child to hide emotions, self-harm may feel like a release. Sometimes, injuring yourself stimulates the body’s endorphins or pain-killing hormones, thus raising their mood.

Or if a person doesn’t feel many emotions, he might cause himself pain in order to feel something “real” to replace emotional numbness. Once a person injures herself, she may experience shame and guilt. If the shame leads to intense negative feelings, that person may hurt herself again. The behavior can thus become a dangerous cycle and a long-time habit. Some people even create rituals around it.

Symptoms of self-harm include:

• Scars, often in patterns
• Fresh cuts, scratches, bruises, bite marks or other wounds
• Excessive rubbing of an area to create a burn
• Keeping sharp objects on hand
• Wearing long sleeves or long pants, even in hot weather
• Frequent reports of accidental injury
• Difficulties in interpersonal relationships
• Behavioral and emotional instability, impulsivity and unpredictability
• Statements of helplessness, hopelessness or worthlessness[1]