 Cover of the 1st edition | |
| Author | Marilee Strong |
|---|---|
| Language | English |
| Subject | Self-harm |
| Published | 1998 (Viking Press) |
| Publication place | United States |
| Media type | |
| Pages | 232 |
| ISBN | 0-670-87781-6 |
| OCLC | 39281973 |
| 616.8582 | |
| LC Class | RC552 |
A Bright Red Scream: Self-Mutilation and the Language of Pain is a 1998 non-fiction psychology book written by American journalist Marilee Strong about self-harm. Published by Viking Press, it is the first general interest book on self-harm. [1]
In 1987, American psychiatrist Armando Favazza published Bodies Under Siege: Self-mutilation in Culture and Psychiatry , the first psychiatric text on the subject of self-harm. Marilee Strong was an American journalist who had spent several weeks in Mozambique on a Pulitzer Fellowship reporting on the psychological trauma experienced by children as a result of the civil war. [2] When she returned to the United States, she heard about self-harm and decided to research the subject. [2] In 1993, she wrote an article for San Francisco Focus entitled "A Bright Red Scream", part of a surge in media interest in the topic in the years following the publication of Favazza's book. [3] Strong's was the first in-depth magazine article on self-harm and was the cover story for that issue. [1] [2] To research the book, she interviewed over 50 people who intentionally harm themselves, many of them by cutting. [1] [4] She also interviewed neuroscientists, psychologists and psychiatrists, including Favazza, a recognised expert on self-harm, and Bessel van der Kolk, a specialist in posttraumatic stress disorder. [5] The title of the article and book came from an interview with a self-harmer who described the action of self-mutilation as a cry for help, calling it "a bright red scream". [6]
Millions of people in the United States regularly engage in self-harm, intentionally injuring themselves. [7] Many of them use sharp objects such as knives, razors or broken glass to cut themselves. [7] Strong set out to find the meaning behind this intentional self-harm, exploring related fields of research like child abuse, addiction and posttraumatic stress disorder. [5]
Charles R. Swenson reviewed the book for American Psychiatric Association journal Psychiatric Services . He called it "an illuminating and compassionate book" and said that the "greatest strength of this book is journalistic." [4] Regarding Strong's focus on the childhood psychological trauma experienced by many cutters, he criticised her for neglecting "the nearly 50 percent of self-mutilating individuals who do not report trauma histories". [4] Writing for Time , Tamala M. Edwards called it "a compelling tour of the trauma and science of self-injury". [8]
Neurosis is a term mainly used today by followers of Freudian thinking to describe mental disorders caused by past anxiety, often that has been repressed. In recent history, the term has been used to refer to anxiety-related conditions more generally.
Factitious disorder imposed on self, also known as Munchausen syndrome, is a factitious disorder in which those affected feign or induce disease, illness, injury, abuse, or psychological trauma to draw attention, sympathy, or reassurance to themselves. Munchausen syndrome fits within the subclass of factitious disorder with predominantly physical signs and symptoms, but patients also have a history of recurrent hospitalization, travelling, and dramatic, extremely improbable tales of their past experiences. The term Munchausen syndrome derives its name from the fictional character Baron Munchausen.
Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is a mental and behavioral disorder that develops from experiencing a traumatic event, such as sexual assault, warfare, traffic collisions, child abuse, domestic violence, or other threats on a person's life or well-being. Symptoms may include disturbing thoughts, feelings, or dreams related to the events, mental or physical distress to trauma-related cues, attempts to avoid trauma-related cues, alterations in the way a person thinks and feels, and an increase in the fight-or-flight response. These symptoms last for more than a month after the event. Young children are less likely to show distress, but instead may express their memories through play. A person with PTSD is at a higher risk of suicide and intentional self-harm.
Self-harm is intentional conduct that is considered harmful to oneself. This is most commonly regarded as direct injury of one's own skin tissues usually without a suicidal intention. Other terms such as cutting, self-injury, and self-mutilation have been used for any self-harming behavior regardless of suicidal intent. Common forms of self-harm include damaging the skin with a sharp object or by scratching, hitting, or burning. The exact bounds of self-harm are imprecise, but generally exclude tissue damage that occurs as an unintended side-effect of eating disorders or substance abuse, as well as societally acceptable body modification such as tattoos and piercings.
Frank A. Gerbode wrote of a method known as traumatic incident reduction (TIR). He is an Honors graduate of Stanford University and later pursued graduate studies in philosophy at Cambridge University. He received his medical degree from Yale University, and completed a psychiatric residency at Stanford University Medical Center in the early 1970s.
Psychological trauma is an emotional response caused by severe distressing events that are outside the normal range of human experiences. It must be understood by the affected person as directly threatening the affected person or their loved ones with death, severe bodily injury, or sexual violence; indirect exposure, such as from watching television news, may be extremely distressing and can produce an involuntary and possibly overwhelming physiological stress response, but does not produce trauma per se. Examples include violence, rape, or a terrorist attack.
Mary Magdalene de' Pazzi, OCarm, was an Italian Carmelite nun and mystic. She has been declared a saint by the Catholic Church.
Complex post-traumatic stress disorder is a stress-related mental disorder generally occurring in response to complex traumas, i.e., commonly prolonged or repetitive exposures to a series of traumatic events, within which individuals perceive little or no chance to escape.
A scream is a loud/hard vocalization in which air is passed through the vocal cords with greater force than is used in regular or close-distance vocalisation. This can be performed by any creature possessing lungs, including humans.
Bodies Under Siege: Self-mutilation in Culture and Psychiatry is a book written by psychiatrist Dr. Armando Favazza, and published in 1987.
Armando Favazza is an American author and psychiatrist best known for his studies of cultural psychiatry, deliberate self-harm, and religion. Favazza's Bodies Under Siege: Self-mutilation in Culture and Psychiatry (1987) was an early psychiatric book on this topic. His 2004 work, PsychoBible: Behavior, Religion, and the Holy Book presents objective data regarding commonly held misconceptions about the Bible as a whole as well as its major passages. In Kaplan and Sadock's Comprehensive Textbook of Psychiatry he has written the chapter on "Anthropology and Psychiatry" in the 3rd edition (1980), the 4th edition (1985) and the 8th edition (2005), as well as the chapter on "Spirituality and Psychiatry" in the 9th edition (2009). He has published two cover articles in the American Journal of Psychiatry: "Foundations of Cultural Psychiatry" [135:293-303,1978] and "Modern Christian Healing of Mental Illness" [139:728-735,1982]. In 1979 he co-founded The Society for the Study of Culture and Psychiatry.
Childhood trauma is often described as serious adverse childhood experiences (ACEs). Children may go through a range of experiences that classify as psychological trauma; these might include neglect, abandonment, sexual abuse, emotional abuse, and physical abuse, witnessing abuse of a sibling or parent, or having a mentally ill parent. These events have profound psychological, physiological, and sociological impacts and can have negative, lasting effects on health and well-being such as unsocial behaviors, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), and sleep disturbances. Similarly, children whose mothers have experienced traumatic or stressful events during pregnancy have an increased risk of mental health disorders and other neurodevelopmental disorders.
Grief counseling is a form of psychotherapy that aims to help people cope with the physical, emotional, social, spiritual, and cognitive responses to loss. These experiences are commonly thought to be brought on by a loved person's death, but may more broadly be understood as shaped by any significant life-altering loss.
Self-embedding is the insertion of foreign objects either into soft tissues under the skin or into muscle. Self-embedding is typically considered deliberate self-harm, also known as nonsuicidal self-injury, which is defined as "deliberate, direct destruction of tissues without suicidal intent."
Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome: America's Legacy of Enduring Injury and Healing is a 2005 theoretical work by Joy DeGruy Leary. The book argues that the experience of slavery in the United States and the continued discrimination and oppression endured by African Americans creates intergenerational psychological trauma, leading to a psychological and behavioral syndrome common among present-day African Americans, manifesting as a lack of self-esteem, persistent feelings of anger, and internalized racist beliefs. The book was first published by Uptone Press in Milwaukie, Oregon, in 2005, with a later re-release by the author in 2017.
50 Signs of Mental Illness: A Guide to Understanding Mental Health is a 2005 book by psychiatrist James Whitney Hicks published by Yale University Press. The book is designed as an accessible psychiatric reference for non-professionals that describes symptoms, treatments and strategies for understanding mental health.
Psychopathography of Adolf Hitler is an umbrella term for psychiatric literature that deals with the hypothesis that Adolf Hitler, the leader of Nazi Germany, was mentally ill, although Hitler was never diagnosed with any mental illnesses during his lifetime. Hitler has often been associated with mental disorders such as bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, and psychopathy, both during his lifetime and after his death. Psychiatrists and psychoanalysts who have diagnosed Hitler as having mental disturbance include well-known figures such as Walter C. Langer and Erich Fromm. Other researchers, such as Fritz Redlich, have concluded that Hitler probably did not have these disorders.
Posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is a cognitive disorder, which may occur after a traumatic event. It is a psychiatric disorder, which may occur across athletes at all levels of sport participation.
Trauma-sensitive yoga is yoga as exercise, adapted from 2002 onwards for work with individuals affected by psychological trauma. Its goal is to help trauma survivors to develop a greater sense of mind-body connection, to ease their physiological experiences of trauma, to gain a greater sense of ownership over their bodies, and to augment their overall well-being. However, a 2019 systematic review found that the studies to date were not sufficiently robustly designed to provide strong evidence of yoga's effectiveness as a therapy; it called for further research.
A self-inflicted wound (SIW) or self-inflicted injury (SII) is a physical injury done to oneself. This may occur in contexts including: