Help for Girls With Cutting Disorders

Girls With Cutting Disorders

Cutting Disorder is Treated at Clearview Horizon

We are here to treat your daughter if she suffers from Cutting Disorder, a form of self-harm in which a girl will use sharp objects (such as knives or blades) to create surface cuts over her own body. While not suicidal, your daughter is indeed intentionally injuring herself, possibly using cutting (or Self-Mutilation) to help her cope. Your daughter will likely be careful to make sure that her wounds are not seen.

Cutting may be viewed as its own mental illness, but is certainly a symptom of other problems, such as Behavior Personality Disorder, Depression, Anxiety Disorder. If you are seeing unexplained wounds or scars (sometimes explained as, “I was just being clumsy”), bloodstained clothes, sharp objects (maybe bottle caps or shattered glass) among her possessions, inappropriately long-sleeved shirts or long pants in warm weather, and extended isolation and irritability, your daughter may be struggling with Cutting Disorder.

You may have been quite shocked to discover your daughter having this problem since many most often relate it to a darker, “underworld” element rather than a “normal” middle-class family setting.

Clearview Horizon – The Ideal Setting to Help Your Daughter with Cutting Disorder

Cutting typically begins in middle to late adolescence and might be triggered by factors such as low self-esteem, detachment from friends, even a feeling of lack of approval from her family. Long-term therapy can be reasonably effective but your daughter must first understand her need for help and want to make a change.

Treatments can vary depending on the professionally identified cause for the behavior, but cognitive behavioral therapy and dialectical behavior therapy (which could teach her about her personal triggers and establish which coping skills might be most effective) are most frequently used. Alternative outlets for expression are also rather useful, with techniques such as journaling, sports or physical activity, spending time with friends. Obviously, removing any type of sharp object can help her resist immediate urges for self-harm.

Helping Cutting Disorder... Here is How we Do it at Clearview Horizon

Clearview Horizon specializes in dealing with 13-to 17-year-old young women who display inappropriate behaviors, declining grades, or negative influences that may put their future at risk. With our interdisciplinary counseling team (consisting of psychotherapists, psychiatric specialists, teachers, and mentors) we are here to help your girl deal with her difficult emotional issues and start on a new and more productive path in life.

An individual treatment plan will be created for your daughter, tailored to her unique psychological, emotional, and medical needs. Along with schooling (or career training) and daily chores, the Clearview program is personable and relational, but also highly structured, emphasizing physical activities and a nutritionally balanced diet, all designed to teach a healthy lifestyle.

Our therapeutic boarding school is housed in a secure mountainside lodge in near Sandpoint, Idaho, where our techniques (including individual, group, and family therapy) are chosen for girls who need to make better choices as well as develop strong interpersonal and academic skills. Our program is created to help your daughter find the strength to overcome Cutting Disorder, enabling her to live the rest of her life as a successful and healthy woman.