Talk:Self-harm/Archive 6

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Why does it say "disgusting creatures" below the title?

??? Depthburg (talk) 06:49, 14 February 2017 (UTC)

Autocomplete says "disgusting creatures"

While I was typing in the word "self" on the English homepage, the autocomplete suggested "Self-harm" as a related article. The description however only says "disgusting creatures". Is this a mistake, an oversight, or someone's sick joke hoping to slip it past the contributors? I don't know how to attach a screenshot but you can see it in the autocomplete on the English homepage.

I don't know how that is here.

should ping an admin to have a look. I can see it on the mobile version of the page but not the desktop version. Can someone fix this please and block the culprit. Polyamorph (talk) 08:57, 14 February 2017 (UTC)

It was the description on Wikidata. I have reverted the vandalism there. – Finnusertop (talk ⋅ contribs) 09:10, 14 February 2017 (UTC)
Thank you Polyamorph (talk) 09:49, 14 February 2017 (UTC)
Yes this is a known fair common problem. As we edit by desktop and do not check on WD much vandalism there can persist for months and only our readers notifying us often results in it being picked up. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 02:40, 15 February 2017 (UTC)
They've protected the page now for 1 year over at wikidata. Cheers Polyamorph (talk) 09:32, 15 February 2017 (UTC)

Main image

I did not find the new suggestion to be an improvement as I find the background distracting. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 05:25, 16 February 2017 (UTC)

Fair enough, the current one isn't very good quality as an image (out of focus?). Would be good to have a better quality image at some point. Polyamorph (talk) 10:00, 16 February 2017 (UTC)
Agree. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 11:28, 16 February 2017 (UTC)

Blue Whale game

I removed the following:

The Blue Whale game is a reported internet phenomenon where participants are given one task each day to carry out. Some of the early tasks involve self-harm, and the final task is said to be suicide.

Benjamin (talk) 19:29, 31 March 2017 (UTC)

Paradox?

Hence, there remain widely opposing views as to whether the gender paradox is a real phenomenon, or merely the artifact of bias in data collection.

I don't think it's a paradox. But I not sure what word to use...--Jack Upland (talk) 20:45, 11 April 2017 (UTC)

Not the best source. A little old and not pubmed indexed[1] Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 04:55, 12 April 2017 (UTC)

Fictional self-harmers

The category of fictional characters who have self-harmed has been deleted, see https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Contributions/Cydebot&dir=prev&offset=20170717063818&limit=20&target=Cydebot . I considered making a list but List of fictional self-harmers was deleted at AFD in 2007, as was Self-injury in popular culture, see Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of fictional self-harmers (2nd nomination). Unless there are citations for discussion of notable characters' self-harming outside coverage of the works themselves, it is probably best not to re-create such a list. – Fayenatic London 07:08, 17 July 2017 (UTC)

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Recent treatment edits

Doc James, regarding this and this, it seems you think we should go with the newer text/sources? Flyer22 Frozen (talk) 04:38, 2 March 2020 (UTC)

User:Flyer22 Frozen I did not look at it that hard. But yah 1998 is a little old.
The source says "Probably efficacious for reducing nonsuicidal self-injury and suicide attempts."
Will adjust a bit. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 17:33, 2 March 2020 (UTC)
I appreciate you tweaking the text. Flyer22 Frozen (talk) 00:43, 3 March 2020 (UTC)

"Commit" versus "dying by"

There is a push to go with the later and I do not think it is unreasonable.[2]

User:Flyer22 Frozen your thoughts? Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 17:37, 2 March 2020 (UTC)

Doc, of course I'm aware of the push. We've been in these discussions more than once. I'm aware of your thoughts on the matter. Per Wikipedia talk:Categorization/Archive 17#RFC: Categories with committed suicide in title, I am against the push. I do not like Wikipedia being used for the push. As that discussion shows, this has been extensively debated on Wikipedia. And each time, when surveying various Wikipedians, the Wikipedia community consensus has been against replacing "committed suicide" with "died by suicide." Flyer22 Frozen (talk) 00:39, 3 March 2020 (UTC)
That stated, there have been a few times when I've seen "committed suicide" replaced with "died by suicide", and I left it alone. Flyer22 Frozen (talk) 00:46, 3 March 2020 (UTC)

Self Mutilation

Self mutilation is different! It’s like religious mutilation, for example but you do it to yourself. I think IgnoredCelery (talk) 15:28, 30 November 2020 (UTC)

How is it different, the terms are synonymous. Polyamorph (talk) 15:50, 30 November 2020 (UTC)

Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment

This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 14 September 2020 and 23 November 2020. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Eoconnell36. Peer reviewers: Hraybin, Kbaeza-hernandez.

Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 08:55, 17 January 2022 (UTC)

Self-harm scars image

I do not find the image in this article offensive, nor do I object to it on the grounds that it is emotionally triggering. However, as a clinical psychologist specializing in the treatment of chronic suicidality and non-suicidal self-injury, I would strongly advise against its being displayed in this extremely conspicuous manner at the very start of the article, and even more so to its appearing as a thumbnail when right-clicking on the link to this article. For many with histories of chronic self-harm (who may be navigating to this page precisely to get a better understanding of a symptom they are struggling with), visual images of self-harm scars create overwhelming urges to engage in a compulsive behavior which carries significant risk of lethality or serious and permanent nerve or other structural damage. Whether we may feel this ought to be so or ought not to be so unfortunately does not alter the fact that it IS so. The positioning of the image as it stands now is akin to a right-click on the link to the article about seizures being programmed to cause the entire monitor screen to blink rapidly like a strobe light. There exists an actual risk that human beings will be physically injured, and perhaps very seriously so. I don't believe this is a question of censorship. By all means, include the image as a reference for readers—but please exchange its position with that of one of the other images or charts on the page. (And if it were at all possible for the image to be visible only upon confirmation of the desire to see it, that would be great. Again, this is not a matter of sparing people from being offended, disgusted, indignant, saddened, or shocked; it is a matter of reducing the risk of a proximal cause of serious injury or even death, due merely to the specific placement of the image within the article.) For a citation to support this, see for example here. Forthentwice (talk) 08:14, 29 February 2020 (UTC)Forthentwice

As a non-psychologist I would warn self-harming people against reading this page in the first place, since the text alone can trigger self harm. The warning is, therefore, embedded in the article title itself, if you have problems with uncontrollable urges avoid things that trigger those urges, like reading the article.
Not wanting to reject your request flippantly, I must point out we also have Suicide methods, Advocacy of suicide, Hanging, etc. Moreover, we have articles on spiders, harmful to arachnophobics, articles on evolution and the Big Bang, which religious fundamentalists find harmful, on heroine, cocaine and various other drugs, explosives and guns Homeland Security might find dangerous and many other subjects to rile up a wide variety of people. Wikipedia is WP:NOTCENSORED, which is an important quality for an encyclopedia. Once it stops calling a spade, a spade, something important is lost. Kleuske (talk) 08:39, 29 February 2020 (UTC)
Thank you for your response, Kleuske! I do appreciate the point you are making. Here are some remaining concerns from my end.
"I would warn self-harming people against reading this page in the first place..." Yes, but how? What can we do to give folks a fair chance of knowing that they shouldn't read this article, or even right-click on it, because of its opening image?
"The warning is, therefore, embedded in the article title itself..." I disagree. I myself was very surprised to find that right-clicking on the article link led to a large thumbnail of that image. I don't think that just any reasonable person would know to expect that. Again, if I were to click on an article entitled "Epileptic Seizures," I would NOT expect that the article would begin with a strobe light.
"...if you have problems with uncontrollable urges avoid things that trigger those urges, like reading the article." Two things here: First, I do not believe that reading the text in this article would necessarily trigger urges in the same way suddenly seeing that unexpected image would. Second, anyone reading this article would be doing so because they chose to, whereas many (most?) people seeing that image pop up on their screen would be seeing it completely unexpectedly.
"I must point out we also have Suicide methods, Advocacy of suicide, Hanging, etc.," again, anyone reading these articles would be doing so knowingly. I agree with you that it is not an encyclopedia's job to try to protect people FROM THEMSELVES. My objection here is, once again, that I believe the risk in question here to be one that the average reader to whom it would pose a danger would not think to EXPECT.
"Moreover, we have articles on spiders, harmful to arachnophobics..." Articles on spiders are not harmful to arachnophobics. Even if by right-clicking on the article a life-size hyperrealistic image of tarantula were to appear to be crawling across the reader's screen (which is NOT what happens in reality here, by the way), the person with arachnophobia would be highly distressed for a moment and then move on with their lives, without any risk of permanent injury.
"Articles on evolution and the Big Bang, which religious fundamentalists find harmful..." Again, I would need to hear a very convincing argument from someone before I believed that merely clicking on any such article could put someone in immediate physical danger. In the case of unexpected self-harm scar images, on the other hand, we are discussing an empirical finding of a proximal causal prompting event leading to physical harm. My same objections apply to the other examples you mentioned.
"Wikipedia is WP:NOTCENSORED, which is an important quality for an encyclopedia. Once it stops calling a spade, a spade, something important is lost." This I could not agree more with. But I do not believe that what I am suggesting is any kind of censorship. I am not calling for the image to be removed at all. I am simply recommending that it not be the PRIMARY image associated with this article, and that it not pop up when someone right-clicks on links to this article. I do not believe that the article would be any less complete, powerful, comprehensive, clarifying, etc, etc, etc, if we simply change the order of the images. In fact, I do not believe anything whatsoever would be lost if we did that. Again, knowing what I know about the population I work with, I still think the ideal thing would be to blur the image, wherever it is placed, (but not the caption) until it is clicked on. If this would be felt to be crossing the line into censorship, or to be opening things up to a slippery slope, then I think that would be a fair debate to have. But I don't think there would be any harm in changing the placement of the picture within the article. I don't think that the fact that the arachnophobia article doesn't open with a large image of a hairy spider makes that article any less comprehensive. 20:32, 29 February 2020 (UTC)Forthentwice
I see no WP:Policy based reason in your rationale above for removing this image. The image is very representative of typical self-harm scars by cutting and is very informative. Your suggestion to blur the image will make the article less informative. Polyamorph (talk) 18:09, 1 March 2020 (UTC)
Fair enough. What about my suggestion to switch the order of the images within the article? (By the way, I never suggested removing the image.) 18:45, 1 March 2020 (UTC)Forthentwice
We have discussed this alot. Evidence that this "triggers" anything is poor. For example the person who has these scares is not triggered every time they look at it. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 17:39, 2 March 2020 (UTC)
I genuinely appreciate that you have discussed this ad nauseam, and that you are acting in the way you think is most fair and most in line with the principles Wikipedia is trying to uphold. At the same time, I think to say that "evidence that this 'triggers' anything is poor" is not accurate, even in the face of specific counterexamples. Here are a handful of different sources that, although not randomized controlled trials, show that a great number of people are indeed directly triggered by these images to engage in self-harm. I don't want to be disruptive if you feel this decision is already made, so I won't continue to press the point anymore. Once again, I respect and appreciate all your efforts and patience.02:32, 3 March 2020 (UTC)Forthentwice
Sorry to bump this thread as its obvious its at a conclusion.. but for some people its very triggering and semi-traumatizing.. obviously I agree with everyones view of WP:NOTCENSORED and that people should expect when opening the page but the image is see-able from hover-over (when on-wiki) and could be hidden under semi-unconspicous words. Such as how I ended up here, from reading "No more than the average person. While some (but not all) systems may have aggressive or violent parts, in practice this energy usually winds up directed toward the system's body, not toward others." on Tazmin User's page about DID and other plurality stuff.. I mean yea I understand it now, but at the time I didnt fully understand the meaning of such words and it could heavily trigger some readers. Again, I understand this discussion is mainly over but I feel like there is a need for a voice of people who may be affected by such images. -- 𝒥𝒶𝒹𝑒 (Talk) • 𝓉𝒽𝑒𝓎/𝓉𝒽𝑒𝓂] 20:26, 23 February 2022 (UTC)
@NeoJade: Only just saw that you mentioned me here. For what it's worth, I don't see the current image as problematic. The previous image of fresh cuts went too far, but healed scars are no worse than we show on many articles. If you're unsure where a link will take you, you can always check by hovering over it (on desktop) or long-pressing (on mobile). But ultimately, yeah, we'll never find a perfect balance between giving our readers informative content and avoiding triggering some readers. I think it's important to consider, though, that if this is triggering for you, that's presumably because you have some previous exposure to these kinds of scars. But not all of our readers do. A 14-year-old who's been having urges to self-harm may well not know what the long-term effects of that are on the body. I definitely didn't when I was 14, in a friend group where some people would self-harm daily; I don't think they knew either. I won't deny the risk of contributing to relapses, but we also have the chance to potentially dissuade people who previously only knew the romanticized image they see on Tumblr (Snapchat? TikTok? it was Tumblr when I was that age)—or, if you take a more libertarian view, to at least allow them to make a more informed decision about what they do to their bodies.
P.S. In the context of the essay of mine you quote, the subtlety was intentional—not with the goal of shocking anyone, but rather to avoid the essay's content itself being needlessly shocking by using the words "self-harm". But if you'd like me to reword so as to make it more obvious where the link points, I can. (This bit's off-topic for this page, so feel free to respond to it on the essay's talk; just ping me—Tamzin, not Tazmin, btw, but I take no offense :) .) -- Tamzin[cetacean needed] (she/they) 11:35, 1 April 2022 (UTC)

Suggestion

I think it may be a good idea to put a disclaimer at the top, possibly with a link to a crisis hotline? things like that seem to be the norm for pages elsewhere on the internet dealing with self-harm, suicide, abuse, etc. Cassie Schebel, almost a savant. <3 (talk) 14:59, 22 March 2022 (UTC)

@Cassie Schebel: This is a good idea, is there any related policy on this we can go by? SP00KYtalk 18:26, 3 May 2022 (UTC)

Updating article with DSM-5-TR content and new research

The DSM-5-TR released this year (March 2022) includes new subsections (ex: "Prevalence", "Culture-Related Diagnostic Issues") for Non-Suicidal Self-Injury in section 3, and diagnostic codes for NSSI in section 2. Additionally, a lot more research about self-harm has been made since the 2013 DSM-5 and the even older DSM-IV-TR, which is still cited by this Wikipedia page. I'm new to Wikipedia editing — is there a process where people come together and happily update a very long and respected article? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Cxel (talk • contribs) 18:50, 23 May 2022 (UTC)

@Cxel: I was looking at this article and thinking the same thing myself! Feel free to be WP:BOLD and propose changes or edit it directly. I would note that proposed criteria for NSSI were also in the DSM-5, at a glance the two sets of criteria seem to be identical. As far as I can tell it's not really clear if that diagnosis is being used or not, and whether it's notable enough or not, since it is still only "proposed". Darcyisverycute (talk) 10:04, 12 July 2022 (UTC)
@Cxel and Darcyisverycute: I concur, please be bold and edit directly. Or post here what changes you think should be made, and if you have any good references, and we can help you. Cheers Polyamorph (talk) 10:16, 6 August 2022 (UTC)

Image: SelfHarm2017.jpg necessary?

Is the image (file) of self harm scars at the top of the page necessary? It is something that will obviously be 'triggering' (for a lack of a better word) and distressing unnecessarily to a lot of people without really adding much to the article. In the same vein I do not think we would show the aftermath of violent abuse on related pages, a bloodied human cadaver on the Murder page or the eroded sphincter on the Anorexia page for reasons of being to graphic, this should IMHO be thought of in the same vein. I am not sure on this yet so will leave it open to conversation for a time.SP00KYtalk 18:26, 3 May 2022 (UTC)

@W1tchkr4ft 00: Indeed, I'm more ambivalent on this one than the typical WP:NOTCENSORED and MOS:SHOCK complaints, mainly because it's far more 'triggering' than the lead images of, say, smallpox or even suicide. The lead image for suicide is excellent; it is all at once moving, appropriately (but not gratuitously) graphic, and demonstrative of the importance of suicide in art. I suspect even the most clamorous WP:NOTCENSORED fans would disfavor a gruesome, real-world suicide as the lead image for that article. But I can't think of a good artistic depiction of self-harm, and a drawing of someone, say, cutting, seems insensitive in the opposite direction by trivializing the issue, and perhaps by providing unrealistic indications of what self-harm looks like in practice. Hm. Ovinus (talk) 00:48, 5 August 2022 (UTC)
This has been discussed many times. The image shows healed self-harm scars. This is an accurate and informative representation of self-harm scars. It is not an extreme image as the OP is suggesting. As has been discussed previously, it is no more triggering than the article text itself. Polyamorph (talk) 07:22, 5 August 2022 (UTC)
As this seems to be a perennial topic, I've made an FAQ. Ovinus (talk) 20:34, 5 August 2022 (UTC)
@Polyamorph:The claim that this is not triggering is simply untrue to make. I feel extreme discomfort seeing the image of this article and to compare text to image is apple to orange. If the discussions have been had though feel free to contribute positively by linking them. SP00KYtalk 02:12, 6 August 2022 (UTC)
I did not say the image is not triggering. I said it is not an extreme image you are suggesting it is. Comparing it to bloodied human cadaver or the eroded sphincter is apple to orange. These are healed scars. Previous discussions are in the linked archives. Polyamorph (talk) 02:32, 6 August 2022 (UTC)
What is it you think you are adding here? If the conversation has been had then please link them or kindly stop intruding. SP00KYtalk 14:28, 8 August 2022 (UTC)
The conversations are linked above in the archives. I find it difficult to see how I can possibly be intruding when I've been editing this article since 2007 and I am by far the most prolific contributor Polyamorph (talk) 15:52, 8 August 2022 (UTC)
Conversations on talk pages are meant to be open - anyone may contribute, provided their contributions comply with Wikipedia's policies and guidelines, - Arjayay (talk) 16:18, 8 August 2022 (UTC)
Indeed. Polyamorph (talk) 16:41, 8 August 2022 (UTC)
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