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“Cutting and burning in my life made the pain that was going on in my mind real. By taking a curling iron and just … shoving it into my arm, taking a razor blade and just… ripping it across my arm, that released the endorphins that kind of made me feel like it’s okay.”
It’s one of those days. One of those weeks actually, or even one of those months or years. You feel like you can hardly keep up with the craziness of life, like the world around you is spinning out of control and there is nothing you can do to stop it. The anxiety is building inside of you, the pain becoming a tangible pang in your heart. The tension in your head is constant these days, and the thought of getting up tomorrow morning and starting the day all over again? It’s too much to bear.
Shadow Voices: Understanding Mental Illness
This DVD documentary offers an inside look at what it is like to live with a mental illness and how individuals and their families find their way through medical, governmental, societal and spiritual issues.
To Write Love on her Arms
This non-profit movement is dedicated to presenting hope and finding help for people struggling with depression, addiction, self-injury and suicide. TWLOHA exists to encourage, inform, inspire and also to invest directly into treatment and recovery.
Cutting: Understanding and Overcoming Self Mutilation
This book by Steven Levenkron was mentioned by Kari in the program.
Unsung: Family Voices on Mental Illness
Twelve radio spots featuring Kari and others talking about their experience with stigma and a difficult-to-navigate mental health system. The spots are available free of charge to be used as public service announcements on radio stations. Listen to the spots at this site or request a free CD of spots to take to your local radio station.
The Scarred Soul: Understanding Self-Inflicted Violence – by Tracy Alderman
Helping Teens Who Cut: Understanding and Ending Self-Injury – Michael Hollander PhD
When Your Child Is Cutting: A Parent's Guide to Helping Children Overcome Self-injury – Merry E. McVey-Noble, Ph.D.
Support
SAFE Alternatives – An organization devoted to helping those who self-injure. Also includes a comprehensive list of treatment facilities.
National Suicide Prevention Hotline: 1-800-273-HELP
Kari, the young girl we feature on this week’s Shaping Families, is remarkable if only for her persistence. Talented and popular in high school, she hit the ropes in college when her depression landed her in the psych ward of the local hospital.
Those who lose a loved one to suicide are often left feeling confused, isolated, and helpless. Many deal with what’s been called “survivor’s guilt” – the feeling that if only they had done one thing different, everything would be okay. It is perhaps what makes losing someone by suicide one of the most difficult ways we could ever have to say goodbye. Listen as we talk with Dr. Kay Jamison, professor of psychiatry at Johns Hopkins University about hope for those left behind after suicide.
Download a PDF of a study guide for use in small groups, at home with the family or in Sunday school classes.
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