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When you hurt yourself to cope

For people in the United States who hurt themselves on purpose, or feel the urge to, and for the people who love them. Who answers, at any hour, by text or by phone. What self-harm is, and what it isn’t. Why people do it. Getting through an urge. Looking after an injury. Telling someone. Seeing a doctor or therapist, and the treatment that helps. Stopping, and what to do about slips. What families and friends can do. And the words to say when you call. No lectures, and no detail of any method. One thing at a time.

A word with a dotted line under it, like this, opens its official definition, quoted from a U.S. government glossary.

Your mood, your thoughts, sleep, worry or an urge, and not sure this is the right page? The pages on this site for thoughts of suicide and self-harm, depression, bipolar, anxiety, OCD, trauma, psychosis, eating, drinking and gambling, sleep, grief, ADHD, autism and memory, on one list.

This page and its wording were written with AI (Claude) for Scarlet Beast (our AI policy). The facts come from pages read on October 1, 2026: MedlinePlus, from the U.S. National Library of Medicine (its own Self-Harm page and, read on October 9, 2026, its own Wounds and Injuries and Bleeding pages); NIH News in Health, from the U.S. National Institutes of Health (To Heal a Wound, October 2023, read on October 9, 2026); the American Burn Association (Burn First Aid, read on October 9, 2026); SAMHSA, the U.S. Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (its Self-Harm page) and FindTreatment.gov; the U.S. National Institute of Mental Health (Help for Mental Illnesses); NAMI, the National Alliance on Mental Illness (its self-harm page, HelpLine and Teen & Young Adult HelpLine); Crisis Text Line (its home and self-harm pages); Mental Health America (its self-injury page); The Trevor Project; Poison Control (poison.org); Cornell University’s Self-Injury & Recovery Resources (front and resources pages only); and the 988 Lifeline. NAMI, Crisis Text Line, Mental Health America, The Trevor Project, Poison Control and the American Burn Association are private organisations describing their own services, and the page says whose words it is passing on. We did not call or text any line or contact any provider. We did not read the research behind any therapy, the Institute’s pages on medications, anything on scars, emergency room practice or cost, what insurance covers, any state’s rules on what a counselor or doctor must tell a parent, the guides for parents that MedlinePlus and Cornell point to, or the National Center for PTSD’s page on self-harm and trauma. Changed on October 9, 2026: the first aid lines used to come from two MedlinePlus medical encyclopedia articles (Cuts and puncture wounds; Burns), whose publisher does not allow the text to be reused, so they were taken out. Gone, with nothing in their place: how long to press on a bleeding wound, numbness as a reason to call 911, when stitches may be needed, what to do when something is stuck in a wound, the tetanus shot line, pressing on a cut and putting ointment on it, the longer list of infection signs, and treating a burn you are unsure of as a major one. We are not saying those lines were wrong; we have no page we may pass them on from, so ask a nurse, a doctor or 911. The “call 911” lines about bleeding are now ours and marked. On purpose, this page does not list or describe ways people hurt themselves, and gives no numbers about injuries. Many lines are our own suggestions, most of “Getting through an urge” among them, and the page marks them as ours. This page saves nothing: no account, no cookies, nothing you tick is stored or sent, and no analytics (privacy). Scarlet Beast is not a treatment provider or a government agency, and takes no money from anyone named here. Found a mistake? Email [email protected].