School gives AS girl razor deliberately to self-harm

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I find it very significant that it was a school for young people with Asperger's Syndrome and HFA. It's as if the care staff/teachers didn't have a clue how to deal with this girl's problems so resorted to just giving her the self-harm equipment and letting her get on with it! The school and her own mother have seriously let her down! Where was their duty of care??

If she had gone on to actually kill herself by slashing her throat or something I suppose they'd just call it an 'unavoidable suicide'.

I've not got any time for these residential schools or homes for people with ASDs - I've heard plenty of horror stories about these places. Caring they are not - they are an exercise in making money out of vulnerable people.

I think the only way would be to slice multiple arteries.

Most of the time, people who try to commit suicide by slicing wrists take a painful and agonizingly long time to die. Even if she sliced the carotid artery, it would take more than two minutes. Of course, if found after two minutes, they would have had to get her to an emergency room pretty quickly to repair the damage so that she would survive.

I agree. Can you imagine if a teacher in a mainstream school did this. The uproar!

Quite true. Fifty years ago, they might have got away with it. But the speed and ease in which news is distributed on the Internet reduces the chances significantly as long as someone starts talking. Keeping secrets is far tougher these days.

I know

To society generally we basically don't have as much inherent 'value' as the average NT basically

I've known that for a long time

We have to give ourselves our own sense of value

I would have talked to this girl, asked her why she felt so bad, tried to put something in place to take her mind off the need to self-harm

and certainly made sure she had no access to any implement for self harming!

It's not rocket science is it?!

People who work in the social care field aren't generally known for having much common sense though I'm afraid - I've come across enough of them to have formed a fairly accurate assessment

Yeah. I mean next they will be giving suicidal patients arsenic, giving depressed people shotguns.

Whatever happened to addressing the root cause - you don't just say "there you go then, get on with it" to someone having psychological issues.

This is not good - giving someone with self destructive impulses the tools with which to hurt themselves is endorsing their feelings. They should be reinforcing the positive and trying to pull her away from such things.
This story, if true, is further proof of hell on earth (to me.)

Schools these days . . . Ugh.
Encouraging self-destructive behavior is NOT ok.

If she is allowed to take control and is supported to dress any wounds to avoid infection this is far better than being left to her own devices. There will have been a risk assessment which will ensure that she is not likely to harm herself seriously. Self harm and attempted suicide are quite different and this is a sensible way of giving her control and hopefully reduce the harmful behaviour.

I disagree that self-harm and attempted suicide are different - they are both just different extremes of self-harm

That is disgusting, why would they encourage self harm behavior? I hope her parents sue. That is the most horrific way to go about things.
Why on earth they would give her razors, encourage her to cut, then dress the wounds after she steps out the bano is beyond me.

That whole school, Unsted Park School in Godalming, Surrey needs to be SHUT DOWN after an intensive investigation is done.

They claim they cater to Autism Spectrum students there.
The adults responsibly should be facing CRIMINAL charges for endangerment of a child, abuse, etc. throw the book at them.

They have failed to protect those children at that school. We hear about this one case, yet what other types of abuses have went on with other children as well?

What kind of half cocked nut thinks its okay to give a child with a history of self harm a razor blade???! ! ahhhhhhhhh

Common sense is in very short supply in the UK these days

Sadly not, apparently they did it in agreement with the child's own mother!

People who self harm want to stay alive, those who attempt suicide don't.

Perhaps in some instances, that may be true-- but I think that's a very black-and-white way to view it. I've heard some people who cut themselves claim that they do so because they get hooked on the natural adrenaline rush or the sensation of pain. Far from wishing death upon themselves, they do it to feel more alive. And then there's that friend of mine I spoke of in my last post, the one who has OCD. I've seen her covered in pockmarks and scars from literally picking at her own body until she bleeds. She tells me she hates going through it, but she feels like she has no choice in the matter-- once it enters her thought process, her mind won't let her stop. It isn't necessarily because she's trying to kill herself; it's just a maladaptive compulsion.

Again, without knowing more about this girl's particular issue, I don't see any way to accurately judge. Everyone here is operating under the assumption that this girl had no access to psychiatric support. That may be true, in which case I agree that avenue should have been open-- but if the school was specifically dedicated to students with AS and HFA, I think it's fair to imagine there would have been some sort of mental health support somewhere along the way. I mean, someone had to diagnose her in the first place, and the article mentions that the school had a respectable reputation prior to this incident.

This is true; i have had friends who cut. One cuts and picks and it's a type of compulsion where they are compelled to pick. It's actually a picking disorder i think is listed in the new TR-IV when it comes out. It may be a form of anxiety control for them i'm not sure.
The cutters i have know (my one friend has tons of scars yet she is borderline & i read a lot of borderlines are cutters). They may do it as a release for stressers. Then again everyone has their own reasons for cutting i guess, everyone is different.
I had a friend cut himself solely to use his blood in a painting. Just one cut for art.

People who suffer from compulsions to pick or cut or other things, it's very hard for them to stop. I'm not sure if it has to do with impulse control when one is dealing with stress anxiety issues or what yet i know you can't just stop them or get them to stop. It has nothing to do with being suicidal, they aren;t suicidal (the ones i've spoken of).

The school really sounds like they aren't trained to properly deal with the mental issues or spectrum disorders of the children they teach. They shouldn't be a school at all.

They are clueless on how to go about things.
So they figure "controlled cutting" which is absurd as it reinforces that behavior.

They should have never given her a razor, and taught her a method to try and substitute for cutting.