Researchers at Glasgow University, in a report published in the British Medical Journal, have shown that “being a Goth is the single highest predictor of self harming or suicide in young people.” The effect carries on into later life.
the survey was of 1,258 people, who were assessed at ages 11, 13, 15 and 19, so it was quite thorough! They were invited to categorize themselves by declaring whether they associated with one of 15 different youth sub cultures.
So, I see these Goths in Nottingham. I see a style of dress that borrows from earlier punk, heavy metal and glam rock fashions, but with a huge emphasis on black. They normally look pretty harmless, and are usually in mixed -sex groups, and often coupled up. So I’ve always assumed it’s just a fairly extreme fashion statement, but it’s mostly harmless.
So what’s this sub culture that is “the best predictor of self harming or suicide”? Sounds weird to me. Genuinely intersted, so who can explain?
From what I know, Goths have been around for a fairly long time: they’re nothing new. They are generally harmless to passers by or whatever, and random people don’t have much reason to be intimidated by them.
As for the self-harm bit, I think it mostly comes from the music they listen to. Marilyn Manson is well known (especially in America) for causing young people to inflict harm on themselves. I don’t listen to much Marilyn Manson myself, so I’m not sure whether its down to lyrics, videos or what that influences others - but the self-harm message must be conveyed through the music somehow.
A really cool way to try to get sympathy from people is to attempt suicide by slicing your wrists like a pansy. Sometimes it works-- the suicide part, I mean.
It seems to me that that’s probably what they’re referring to.
“I hate everything, so I just started slashing my wrists with a sharb piece of glass last night.”
“Dude. You are so much more hardcore than me. I want to kill myself now too.”
While the sample pool is small, the conclusions they’re showing is that associating yourself as being Goth is likely helpful in reducing self-harm occurances.
Music is almost never a catalyst for behavior. People are drawn to music that reflects how their feel and the problems they’re facing. Peope don’t just randomly start listening to music and say “Hey, I want to start cutting myself because I read that that guy does”.
If nothing, music and clear subcultures help people by adding a sense of community or belonging - something that these people almost always feel are lacking in their life prior to finding a social group to associate with.
Survey research is truly limited, esp for something like this. The study actually found that GOTHS will CLAIM to have self-harmed on a questionnaire, which probably has SOME unknown relationship to actual self-harming conduct.
Then, do they include cheek or tongue piercing as self-harm? How exactly is THAT defined? What percentage of GOTHS actually engage in self-harm? How well does membership in that group predict self-harm?
I haven’t examined the research, but depending on the predictor variables researchers decide to examine, there are far better predictors. Does it predict self-harm better than Depression or Social Alienation? Or did they even study those as predictors?
One study I did showed that being a regular poster on RecSport Unicycling was the single greatest predictor of having higher unicycling skills. Of course, I didn’t examine #hours practice, #years of practice, or age, which may be better predictors.
Body piercing is not self-harm. They are very different and easy to distinguish between. Self-harm is most easily described as “cutting” - usually with a razor, knife or x-acto and may include other things like burning depending the individual. You may have some people that will pierce themselves as a mode of self-harm, but this is easily identified since the piercings will likely be very, very temporary (maybe not even lasting an evening). The point of self harm is the pain/harm aspect -and body piercing is, quite frankly, a very poor means of generating pain.
What the study is really saying is that for those people that have engaged in self-harm, they’re more likely to later associate themselves with a goth sub-culture - NOT the opposite - since in most cases the self-harm happens BEFORE the goth association. Additionally, after associating with the goth subculture, many stopped harming themselves.
The study obviously leaves a lot to be desired, and thus you can only take the correlaries at face value - but it drives me crazy when people make backwards and incorrect associations with the data that’s just not there.
If you’re talking about genital piercings, then yes - it’s not “self-harm” and there’s a lot of “postiive” aspects to it - most of them are not quite appropriate for this forum, however and are very subjective - but it’s far from self-harm.
If you’re talking about people that actually “pound nails through their penis” then you’re likely referring to the practice of CBT. (google “CBT and piercing” - no quotes if you don’t know what this is) It’s also not appropriate for this forum, but it’s a sexual stimulation for people, and thus outside of the realm of self-harm since the result for the person is pleasure - not pain. It’s a very positive experience for them and something they enjoy.
Context is extremely important when discussing self-harm.
Many years ago, it was alleged that Black Sabbath albums had subliminal messages in that could be heard if you played them backwards. These allegedly urged suicide and Satan worship and that sort of stuff.
I don’t have the exact quote, but I think Ozzy said something along the lines of, “If I was going to put subliminal messages in my records, they’d say, “Buy more of my records.””
2nd of all, the goth subculture is one of misfits. People often identify with the goth subculture because they don’t really fit into another group. Goth culture is pretty accepting. People attracted to dark music and the subject of death and pain are either into the theatrics of it, or have some level of identification.
I think people who hurt themselves are more likely to be drawn to goth subculture than people who are “goth” are to be drawn to hurting themselves.
The thing that you hear a lot for the more goth-related cutting is that it gives them somethng “real” to focus on (the escape that you’re mentioning) or the more “artistic” will say things along the lines of “I’m totally empty, I’d rather feel this than nothing” and similar variations.
In these cases, the context is clear that the motivating force is something very negative emotionally.
However, when we look at pain involved in sexual contexts, that’s not the case. We can easily be talking about a very well-adjusted person that has no “issues” at all - it’s simply something that they find very arrousing.
Now, it’s important to note that there can obviously be some people that fall into both categories - but it’s important to point out that these people do not invalidate those people that are participating in something that is (while very misunderstood) healthy for consenting and mature adults to partake in.
I’ll say it again because it’s important - context (and what ends up being a lot of nuance as well) ends up being really important when looking at these sorts of topics.
[QUOTE=fishnchipsx2]
Marilyn Manson is well known (especially in America) for causing young people to inflict harm on themselves. /QUOTE]
Wowowow hold on a minute there, do you have any proof of this? Did you not think that maybe people who are inclined to self harm listen to Manson to make themselves feel better, and that infact he’s actually helping them? Or are you just slandering an artist about whome you obviously know nothing? Try and think past the most obvious conclusions.
if they would only look for Satan in the church, thier hunt would be over.