My understanding has always been that self harm or plausible discussion of self harm in the US leads to a loss of autonomy in that you can be diagnosed with a mental illness and lose access to things like voting, driving, firearms, etc. (depending on the diagnosis)
There’s a huge chasm between a mental illness diagnosis (which self-harm is very likely to cause, especially in the US where you need diagnosis other than “ain’t quite right—not otherwise specified” for insurance) and actual repercussions. Members of online support groups report that their psychiatrists either treat self-injury like any other symptom (asking about it, describing decreases as good but not praiseworthy) or recommend they stop but do not enforce it. If it gets life-threatening it’s treated like suicide, but that almost never comes up.
My understanding has always been that self harm or plausible discussion of self harm in the US leads to a loss of autonomy in that you can be diagnosed with a mental illness and lose access to things like voting, driving, firearms, etc. (depending on the diagnosis)
Trigger warning for, obviously, self-harm.
There’s a huge chasm between a mental illness diagnosis (which self-harm is very likely to cause, especially in the US where you need diagnosis other than “ain’t quite right—not otherwise specified” for insurance) and actual repercussions. Members of online support groups report that their psychiatrists either treat self-injury like any other symptom (asking about it, describing decreases as good but not praiseworthy) or recommend they stop but do not enforce it. If it gets life-threatening it’s treated like suicide, but that almost never comes up.