Another image shows a freshly sliced forearm, blood still oozing from two deep gashes while hundreds of old, tiny scars are clearly visible along the arm underneath.
These deeply harrowing and disturbing images weren’t found on some dark corner of the internet that took hours to uncover.
They took less than two minutes to find and involved little more than searching the words ‘self-harm’ or ‘cutting’ on social networking site Tumblr, where self-harming bloggers roam free and unmonitored, sharing their pain and posting whatever terrifying images they like.
To anyone questioning the impact of these posts, one received more than 30,000 comments. And, one girl who self-harms confesses that seeing these graphic shots "makes me want to do it more".
She's not the only one – shocking new statistics reveal the number of girls under 18 being treated in hospital in England after self-harming has nearly doubled in 20 years up to 13,463 this year.
How to spot the warning signs of self-harm
The NSPCC explains that young people will go to great lengths to cover self-harm scars and injuries. For example, they will continue to wear long sleeves even in hot weather. If you do spot them they might be explained away as accidents.
The signs to look for divide into the physical and emotional.
Physical signs of self-harm
These are commonly on the head, wrists, arms, thighs and chest and include:
- cuts
- bruises
- burns
- bald patches from pulling out hair
Emotional signs of self-harm
The emotional signs are harder to spot and don't necessarily mean that a young person is self-harming. But if you see any of these as well as any of the physical signs then there may be cause for concern.
- depression, tearfulness and low motivation
- becoming withdrawn and isolated, for example wanting to be alone in their bedroom for long periods
- unusual eating habits; sudden weight loss or gain
- low self-esteem and self-blame
- drinking or taking drugs
The pressures of social media, and pro-cutting hashtags, have been linked to the alarming rise. The devastating effects of such hashtags and forums are clear.
Tallulah Wilson, a gifted young dancer from West Hampstead, was killed by a train in 2012 after self-harming and falling into “the clutches of a toxic digital world”, her mother Sarah told the inquest.
The 15-year-old visited cutting websites before her death. “These contained inappropriate images containing self-harming behaviour,” the jury said.
Some victims are even younger. Troubled Natalie, from Aberdeen, began self-harming when she was 13 – and her arms and legs are still covered in deep scars and burn marks. The youngster turned to cutting because she was being bullied at school and was spurred on by older teens she met on horrific self-harm websites.
“I had hardly done it before I went on these websites but when I started to speak online to people who did it, I felt a lot more able to do it myself,” she told The Sun. “But I want people to realise that no matter how much folk can pretend to be your friend and encourage you to do this, it has consequences.”
Sadly, these Tumblr feeds aren't in the minority. Dozens more images of upper thighs and wrists covered with deep slashes, each picture tagged with hashtags such as #depressed #self-harm and #suicide can be found within moments.
There’s even a bloodied bedsheet with the caption: “My sheets I’m about to pass out on” and a sick GIF showing a thin string of blood bubbling to the surface as a razor is dragged across a wrist.
Search ‘self-harm’ on Instagram and it’s a similar story. A search on Pinterest also throws up an array of bloodied arms and legs with captions such as, “Beauty in Scars” or “I need the release so very badly”.
Nadia Mendoza, the co-founder of Self Esteem Team – an educational group for young people with mental health problems, warns that these sites are "normalising" self-harm.
How you can help someone who is self-harming
There are lots of things you can do to make a difference to someone you know who self-harms. Your attitude and how you relate to them is one of the key things that can help them feel supported. Here are some things to keep in mind:
- Try to be non-judgemental.
- Let the person know that you are there for them.
- Relate to them as a whole person, not just their self-harm.
- Try to have empathy and understanding about what they are doing.
- Let them be in control of their decisions.
- Offer to help them find support by contacting charities like Mind or the NSPCC.
- Remind them of their positive qualities and things they do well.
- Try to have honest communication, where you take responsibility for any fears you have.
She said: "When people are struggling and don’t have the tools to articulate themselves, they turn to coping mechanisms like self-harm to give them that voice.
"But social media fuels that voice that makes people want to cut, while the self-harm seems to help in the here and now, taking that online then allows them to be more ‘vocal’ as they have an audience of like-minded peers. In these forums, people can exist anonymously and without fear of judgement."
"This can make getting better a lot harder as if they feel they belong in these spaces, recovery would be to leave these people behind and lose the friends they connect with. Many of the young people we work with at Self-Esteem Team say that self-harm is so normalised that it is more normal to do it than not."
In 2012, Tumblr and Pinterest took action and banned all self-harm blogs that, “cross the line into active promotion or glorification of self-harm”, yet clearly the self-harming community continues to thrive across each of these social networking sites.
Some post pictures, other simply post quotes which are just as chilling. “I am going to kill myself today” or, “Maybe I’m weird but I like looking at my scars because it makes me feel alive”.
One picture of a scarred arm on Tumblr simply says, “Want more” and receives 62 notes which are viewers either liking or reposting. Some of the posts can get up to 30,000 notes demonstrating how dark content like this is attracting people – many of them teenagers in crisis – in their droves.
Many of the bloggers seem to want to help others who are suffering, advising them not to start cutting and show them they’re not alone.
But the graphic posts may have the opposite effect, with one commenter on a post writing, "think it's wonderful that you're so sweet and offering support to people having emotional difficulties, but as a self-harmer seeing pictures of people's cuts doesn't make me want to stop cutting, it makes me want to do it more :/"
Other bloggers talk about the mechanics of cutting as if it is nothing more than a make-up tutorial and razors no more deadly than a blusher brush. Alarmingly, they even go into in-depth detail on how to make a razor from other household objects.
The NSPCC has warned that Instagram and Tumblr are allowing “extremely dangerous” pictures of self-harm to appear on their sites that could lead to teenagers copying their behaviour.
A spokesman for Tumblr told Fabulous Online: “Promotion and glorification of self-harm is prohibited on Tumblr. We block certain hashtags and actively interrupt users' online experience with interstitial pages in response to related search terms and these pages direct them to expert sources of support before they interact with content on Tumblr.”
And yet, still the images and blogs remain up for everyone to see.
A spokesperson for Pinterest told Fabulous Online: "We are committed to providing Pinners with a safe and inspiring experience, which is why we have clear policies against this kind of content. We take it very seriously and rely on a combination of internal tools and user reports to minimize its presence on our platform. As new Pins are saved by people, we try to proactively remove them before they enter our system, and will not show search results for 'self harm' in search.
"We encourage any user who finds content that violates out policies to report it to our team."
Meanwhile, shocking stats say self-harming by teen girls has DOUBLED in 20 years… so is social media and TV to blame?
Read about the woman who is driven to the brink of suicide every month by PMS so severe she’s violent and ‘loses her grip on reality’
And, what is OCD, what causes Obsessive Compulsive Disorder and what are the symptoms, signs and treatment?
If you or anyone you know are affected by anything in this article, please contact the NSPCC on 0808 800 5000.
Or contact the Samaritans for free on 116 123, or call CALM on 0800 58 58 58.
Fabulous Online has chosen not to publish some of the harrowing images found online.
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