Monday, April 17, 2006

So you're a cutter, huh?

Goth Youths Prone to Suicide Attempts and Self-Mutilation...

I mean, they just figured this out? When I was in high school, I was deep into the punk and ska scenes in central Jersey, and all the goths I knew were into cutting themselves. One or two of them actually committed or attempted to commit suicide.

What I don't get is that they needed a study to figure this out. Of course, the correlating data, presented as odds ratios with confidence intervals, makes the study seem very reliable and worthwhile. The scientists have presented their data well. But, for those of us with an ounce of common sense, talking to one of these bundles of sunshine immediately lets you know, "Hey, this kid ain't right." Many of the goth kids I knew were deeply troubled, and they turned to pain to make them feel better. I've seen it personally with a few people I was close with.

Before you start thinking that I believe that all goths are self-mutilators and headcases, I do believe that there are some people that are just deeply influenced by certain things, gothic music and dress being two of them. With that, they feel they need to play "dress-up" so that they're accepted by the goth community. There's a portion of these goth kids that are really normal, if not a little eccentric. They want to fit in with a group of people outside the mainstream, but their lives are not so bad that they want to cut themselves with barbed wire. I knew many of these people in high school and college, and although their appearance might throw you off, they're really genuinely nice people.

It's the others that scare kitty...