This was a film which felt more like watching Meera’s own journey of discovery about people who self-harm rather than an investigation into the subject matter itself, but as someone who’s a big fan of Meera’s, that was just fine by me, but the fact is, if you were watching this programme in order to get information about self-harm, you may not have got what you wanted out of it.

We did of course hear personal testimony from a number of girls and women who’d self-harmed and why, as well as all the statistics about it, including the fact that men, though less likely to self-harm, do so, but no men featured in the programme.

Meera talked to her friends about why they think self-harming is such a problem in today’s society with one in three young girls reporting that they’ve self-harmed at some point, and their conclusions were the ones that are commonly accepted to be the case; it’s society putting too much pressure on teenagers, it’s schools, it’s parents, it’s fashion magazines, but the fact is, while these may well be issues for some, they are by no means a panacea in terms of explanation of this phenomenon. Read more & comment »