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It is a well-known fact that some school-aged children have self-injured themselves in the past as a way to cope with emotional stress, but a new study has found shocking evidence that it exists even in children as young as 7 years old.
Previous studies have suggested that 1 in 5 teens and young adults engage in self-injury at some point in their life, but this is the first to find such a result in kids so young, raising awareness about a disturbing problem.
The study, based on 665 interviews with school children in Denver and central New Jersey, found that one in 12 third-, sixth- and ninth-graders in the interview had self-injured at least once without the intention of killing themselves. For third-graders alone, close to 7 percent of girls and 8 percent of boys said they had self-injured themselves. About two-thirds of those polled, said they had also done it more than once.
The study defines self-injury as cutting, carving, burning, piercing, or picking at the skin, or hitting oneself to cause pain, but not death.
"A lot of people tend to think that school-aged children, they're happy, they don't have a lot to worry about," study coauthor Benjamin Hankin, a psychologist from the
University of Denver, told
Reuters. "Clearly a lot more kids are doing this than people have known."
The report, published in the journal
Pediatrics, found that many of the children feel that causing themselves physical pain helps them cope with emotional stress. Some researchers believe that physical pain releases feel-good hormones called endorphins that can be calming.
Comment: This extract from the article is very telling: If you have watched the comprehensive documentary on the global financial crisis of 2008 "Inside Job", Narrated by Matt Damon, there is a very similar financially corrupt illusion of stability presented: Goldman Sachs (and probably JP Morgan) bought Credit Default Swaps (insurance) from AIG to cover their potential losses on the collapsing housing market they were heavily exposed to. However, AIG simply did not have enough collateral to cover the 'insurance' when it was called in for the amount Goldman Sachs had bought.
The Eurozone ponzi scheme is similar: Spain's banks speculated massively on the property bubble and are now, due to its collapse, liable for massive incurred debts. The fragility of the whole economy becomes startlingly clear when we see that to cover these losses, loans are coming indirectly from Italy who itself is completely insolvent and next in line for a bailout..