My 17-year-old niece cut her wrist for the fifth time this year. Our priest says she is demon-possessed, but I think a mental health specialist is a better option. How can I help my sister navigate this adolescent crisis?
During my training as a doctor in the early 70s at the University of Nairobi, we did all manner of things that I now know to have been wrong. We, for example, treated patients with what our teachers called “hysteria” by making them inhale concentrated ammonia, which was a most cruel way of attending to the mostly young women who came to us on account of all manner of distress.
The psychological paralysis of the limbs some presented with was a sign that they were in this or that mental health crisis and presented to the accident and emergency department hoping that we could see beyond the paralysis and give them the assistance they needed.
I suspect that some women who were treated in this way might have been so disappointed by the ‘care’ we gave them that they might have ended up killing themselves because the very people who they had gone to seek help from had ended up being crueller than the suffering they might have been enduring back home.
We were no better than the cruel husbands, teachers, parents and in some cases boyfriends. Instead of the attention they desired, we literally used our cruel hands to send them away in shame and disappointment. Sadly, that was the level of our knowledge and that of those who were paid to teach us.
Our training in the UK in the late 70s exposed us to a group of mostly young women whom we referred to as ‘slashers’. Theirs were similar issues, but by this time, we had psychiatrists as teachers, and we were taught to look beyond the symptom of cutting one’s wrist and to see it as a symptom of something deeper that was leading to much distress in the young lady. Your niece would fit in this category.
A few years ago, we saw a girl who was at a national school and who, like your niece was 17 years old, and who had slashed her wrist several times in the preceding year. Her teachers had panicked and sent her home after other girls had reported the fact that she had been using a broken mirror to make cuts to her left wrist. A letter from the doctor was demanded as the certificate for her return to school.
The school was right in demanding reassurance that the girl would not make a much deeper cut that might lead to death, and the parents were also right in wanting to know if their daughter was safe at the school. Their mutual anxiety was almost palpable, as each seemed to blame the other for causing such a bloody problem to the child.
Following a period of assessment, it became clear that the child was under too much pressure at the school, and she by cutting was telling both her parents and the school that she could no longer bear the pressure of being in that school at that time.
She had gained admission to the national school because her mother, who had attended the school had ‘spoken’ to the headmistress who was her high school classmate. Additionally, her father was an influential man in society and had donated substantially to the school projects.
The other girls knew this story and were sure she did not get to the school on merit. The teachers also knew, and because they ‘needed’ the girl to continue in their school, they put much pressure on her to perform academically.
The parents were no better. If the mother had made it there, so must she! In all ways, home and school were like hell to her, and the only thing that gave her some relief was the sight of her blood flowing from her wrists. Indeed, it was also the pain of cutting that enabled her escape from the emotional torture due to the demands placed on her by the family and educational system.
When all this came to light, she was moved to another school where she excelled because she was the top student in a second-tier (private) school, where she also excelled in tennis and swimming.
When seen recently, she was able to express her gratitude to those who had seen beyond the wishes of the teachers and the parents and had spotted a talented girl, hidden behind the aspirations of loving but ignorant parents and teachers.
Is it possible to see your niece in this story? Cutting wrists in this age group is a sign that the child is under some stress and yours is to establish the nature of the problem.
