Figures show high rates of self-harm

Her younger brother had just died from an illness, and she said she needed to do something to ease the guilt she felt that she had not made more of an effort to spend time with him before he passed away.

“I didn’t spend as much time with him as I could have,” she said, with the tears flowing quickly at the thought of the loss, despite about a decade passing since then.

The first cut was on the wrist.

“It came into my head because I didn’t want to talk to anybody about how I was feeling, I wanted to deal with it myself,” Rosa said.

Over time things settled down for the former Mollymook resident and she went on to represent NSW in sport, but her life fell apart a few years ago when she was attacked and sexually assaulted while out jogging one afternoon.

“That sort of changed me,” Rosa said.

She kept the attack secret from her family, and responded by returning to cutting herself, but no-one found out she was hurting herself.

“I’d do it in random places so people wouldn’t know what was happening,” she said.

“I would do it in places that people would never see, or I’d wear jumpers all the time to cover up the cuts.”

Rosa said cutting “made me feel better”.

“It was better to focus on that kind of pain than whatever else was happening in my life and causing me pain.

“It was letting it out.”

In a way, cutting was a distraction from the emotional pain Rosa was feeling as “If I did things like that, I would worry about the cuts instead of what had happened to me.”

She said the cutting had always been about easing and releasing pain, and had “never been to end my life,” although she admitted she had thought regularly about ending her life.

She said a couple of friends had taken their own lives in recent years, and after seeing the heartache they left behind, “I don’t want to do that to other people.”

Rosa left the Shoalhaven last year to find work, and only this year had the courage to reveal to family members what had happened to her, and she had been cutting herself in incidents that were getting worse.

She is now in counselling to deal with the issues that were “wrecking my life”.

However she said it was hard to see a brighter future.

“I want to be something different, I want to be normal, but it’s hard for me to see myself that way because I’ve been this way for ages, and I don’t know if it can get better,” Rosa said.

Rosa is far from alone in her battle with hurting herself, as alarming new figures released last week showed one in four Australian teenage girls had engaged in self-harm.

The largest-ever survey of youth mental health found 10 per cent of teenagers have engaged in self-harm, and one in 13 had contemplated suicide, while one in 40 had attempted it.

The two-year survey of 6300 families found one quarter of girls aged 16 and 17 had engaged in self-harm with one in five meeting the clinical criteria for major depressive disorder.

One in seven children and young people had experienced a mental disorder in the past year and almost one third were suffering more than one disorder.

Health Minister Sussan Ley described the report as "confronting, sad and shocking".

She was concerned that while ADHD cases were falling, there had been a rise in major depressive disorder.

But Ms Ley said it was encouraging that more young people were using support services compared with 1998, when the Mental Health of Children and Adolescents survey was first conducted.

"As a parent it's heartbreaking to see these prevalent stories of depression, anxiety, self-harm and suicidal tendencies amongst our young people, let alone as Health Minister,” she said.

"We must recognise in years gone by many of these cases we're hearing about today would have simply gone unaccounted for while people suffered in silence."

Ulladulla’s youth workers said they encountered repeated cases of teenagers harming themselves but cutting, buy burning their skin, even hitting themselves of deliberately overdosing on medications of drugs.

Program manager with Mission Australia, Liz O’Connell, said self-harm crossed all socio-economic boundaries, and was generally a response to severe emotional pain.

Trauma such as assaults or sexual abuse could also contribute, leading to teenagers harming themselves as a way of temporarily easing the pain.

However Liz said it was important to seek professional help.

Parents were often unaware of issues because teenagers were usually good at hiding things, but the Ulladulla Youth Centre is in the process of organising two information sessions for parents to address issues of self-harm.

* People seeking support and information about suicide prevention can contact Lifeline on 13 11 14 or the Kids Helpline on 1800 55 1800.