"No one understands me (does not hear me, does not like me, does not respect me, does not notice me)," "I am ugly (stupid, stupid, fat, thin, good for nothing)," "No one needs me (everyone hates me, I am sick of everyone)," "No one needs me either (everyone is sick of me). From time to time such thoughts occur to all teenagers. But for some, they become an obsession, an obsession.
Dangerous examples from social networks play their part. For example, popular photos of Chonguk in VK, which show scars on the face and marks on the hands of a young popular performer, depressive pictures, poems about suicide and destruction of his own body, And then the child decides to do a desperate act, without thinking about the consequences.
It's up to the adults around him to do it for him. It's too late to blame yourself for missing the moment, the most tragic thing has already happened. And now, if you found a cut vein on the hands of a teenager, you need to act urgently to prevent the fatal outcome of the tragedy.
Treatments
If the wound is not treated, purulent inflammation can set in and without treatment, the consequences will be more severe than just a scar. This is dangerous when cut where the veins are.
There have been cases in medical practice where a simple cut has caused gangrene and a limb has had to be amputated.
If dirt has already gotten into the wound, remove it. Use tweezers or a sterile bandage twisted into a tourniquet. Treat the clean wound with antiseptic.
The most common preparations at home:
- Hydrogen peroxide;
- Chlorhexidine bigluconate;
- Iodine.
Hydrogen peroxide will be especially effective, in contact with the wound it will form bubbles that will remove germs and bring them to the surface. If there are no pharmacy preparations at hand, then a 2% solution of table salt, vodka or infusion of pharmaceutical chamomile will do, they will not be able to heal the cuts on the wrists.
You can glue a Band-Aid on top or wrap a bandage over the cut hand. For minor wounds, typical of teenagers, these measures will suffice. For deeper cuts, if a boy or girl cuts a vein, you need to have the wounds treated in a trauma center. If the bleeding doesn't stop, the vein is probably nicked.
You need to go to the emergency room, not make up excuses for your mother. Another danger is the possibility of tendon injuries. You need to see a doctor to keep your arm fully functional.
A warning - don't cut yourself, and don't try to cut something, it's dangerous, even if it doesn't hurt.
First Aid
If a cut of the wrist of the hand is found, what to do, how to treat a teenager? First of all, you should not panic, shout and swear. You need to examine the injured limb and provide the necessary first aid.
If the cuts affected veins, you should immediately call an ambulance and hospitalize the teenager. Wounded veins in any part of the body lead to severe blood loss and irreversible consequences, and with serious wounds in teenagers you will not be able to stop the bleeding yourself at home. If the veins are intact, you can do without doctors, everything remains within the confines of your family and apartment.
You will need to do the following:
- Inspect the cuts for dirt and foreign objects in the wounds. If these are found, remove them with tweezers or a sterile bandage twisted into a tourniquet.
- Wash the skin surface with hydrogen peroxide or other antiseptic.
- If there is nothing at hand, you can disinfect with vodka, medical alcohol, chamomile infusion. Or, as a last resort, just soapy water.
- If the bleeding did not stop and a lot of blood is still oozing out, a pressure dressing should be applied to the wound. You can simply press it with your fingers through a napkin.
- Small cuts on the wrist should be taped over with a plaster. Extensive wounds should be bandaged.
Such measures will help avoid infection and suppuration. This is extremely important, infected cuts on the hands with a blade can cause an abscess and extensive sepsis of the body. A teenager can lose a limb or even die if the infection spreads throughout the body.
Important: In addition to veins, hand cuts can also damage tendons. Such an injury can result in partial or complete loss of mobility of the arm. Tendons by themselves do not heal and do not heal, you need the surgical help of a surgeon. Therefore, if your hand won't flex or your fingers are numb and unable to move, you will still need to go to the trauma center.
Methods of treatment
Treatment depends on their depth and quantity. Mild injuries, with a minimal amount of blood, do not need treatment methods other than the usual antibacterial treatment.
To heal a deep cut faster, you can use special ointments. If they are deep enough, however, medical intervention may be necessary to close them. A painless cut will not be possible, the pain will be very bothersome and scars will remain as a reminder.
It makes no sense to heal the cuts, unresolved psychological problems will lead to self-injury. The right solution will be a heart-to-heart talk with people who have gone through a similar period in their lives, or, alternatively, an appeal to a psychologist.
What to do next
Light, small cuts on the wrists do not require any special treatment. It's enough to treat them regularly with antiseptics, such as herbs, to change the plaster and bandages.
Severe, deep cuts in a guy or a girl on the wrists heal for a longer period, it will not be possible to get rid of wounds and marks quickly. It can be accelerated if, in addition to antiseptic solutions for washing and disinfection, you use special ointments. What drugs to look out for? Healing is promoted by:
- Solcoseryl. An ointment based on calf plasma extracts helps quickly heal deep cuts without consequences. A thin protective film is formed on the surface of the wounds, blocking the path of pathogens from the outside. And under the film there will be an active process of wound healing and tissue repair due to the active components in the composition of the product, which stimulate metabolic processes. The ointment has contraindications, so before using it, you should carefully read the instructions.
- Vishnevsky ointment. Does not directly contribute to tissue repair, acts more as an antiseptic, but it is also very important in the healing process. Wounds will not be nagged and inflamed, and will heal faster.
- Rescue. Good for shallow cuts and sores. It also protects against infection in open wounds and inflammation, accelerates metabolic processes and thereby stimulates the rapid healing of skin damage.
Any of the above remedies are applied thickly enough on the damaged areas of the skin, and a bandage is put on top. Change it at least twice a day. Cuts take from 2 days to 2-3 weeks to heal.
How to hide the injuries
After the injuries, there will be a desire to hide the cuts from the eyes of others.
Parents, even mothers are unlikely to appreciate such behavior, and teachers, will inform the social worker.
For wounds, choose places that are easy to hide with clothing.
You can hide the cuts with:
- Women's foundation;
- Powder;
- Makeup.
Much harder to hide cut hands from the home and in the hot season. A popular accessory - tattoo sleeves - underneath the image applied to the fabric, no one will notice. Wrists are hidden under a variety of bracelets and jewelry.
As one of the options - always use bandages. Bandaging the limb, you can lie about the real reason for the bandage, because bandages are also used for bruises.
The easiest method would be to wear clothing with long sleeves.
But it is far from effective - the sleeve can at any moment be pulled up, exposing the cut arms. Clothes will still have to be taken off in various situations. Hiding cuts is essentially pointless - the secret will be revealed, it can happen even in a banal photo.
To disguise, to cover the marks in a conscious age people often use tattoos, beat massive pictures.
Stiletto to the heart and deadly hairpins - women's knife fights in Italy
Of course, hot Italian women were not inferior in militancy to their Spanish neighbors. Often to kill a rival or protect themselves from attack, they used stilettoes - long deadly blades. In 1571, for example, two beautiful ladies arrived at St. Benedict's Convent in Milan and asked for a cell to pray together. But as soon as the nuns left them alone, the women drew their stilettos and attacked each other with rage. When the frightened nuns opened the door, one lady was dead, and the other was bleeding and soon had also given up the ghost.
Sperada
Sometimes steel pins were used in fights as well, with which the hair was pinned. They were called spadini and the hairstyle they were used to create, reminiscent of a royal tiara, was called sperada or rajera. The duel using hairpins was described by Giovanni Chariolo in 1896 in his work on female criminality. According to him, two Neopolitan women first insulted each other, then pulled hairpins out of their hair and attacked each other.
A similar fight is described in his diaries by the Russian journalist Nikolai Novikov, who traveled in Italy in 1775. He told of two young Italian women who did not share a lover and began stabbing each other in the sides and hands with studs with wild fury until they were cut up and tired. At that time, the object of their lust rushed away in horror out of harm's way.
Teenage problems
Why do they cut their veins? Often one of the forms of self-expression becomes a deliberate damage to the body. A child (mostly from the age of 13) wants to scratch himself, to give himself pain, to make a wound on his arm.
In many adolescents, shallow cuts appear especially often due to the accessibility of the limb.
At this age, there are very incomprehensible changes for a teenager. Girls get their periods and their breasts grow, while boys have erections and orgasms. Pubic hair begins to grow. If you don't tell your child about the future changes in the body beforehand, it will be a shock.
If the child's physiological changes occur earlier than his peers, his alienation is natural, and cuts will result from a desire to return to a familiar body.
The attempt to cut open his veins is explained by the fact that the teenager wants to draw attention to himself and his experiences. This behavior is similar to the desire to pinch yourself during a nightmare dream. Under the influence of hormones, the worldview changes drastically, and reality somewhat loses its boundaries.
The body becomes the only stronghold, and teenagers inflict wounds on themselves to confirm reality. Many of them claimed that all the negative and gloomy thoughts came out of them along with the leaking blood. Cuts were not always an indication of a desire to commit suicide.
On the contrary, by letting their negative emotions out, the child was confirming their desire to go on living. Suicidal people do not want to share their problems with others, and showing cuts - they think it is right, trying to attract attention. Most of these attracting cuts just graze the top layer of skin and are not life-threatening.
Psychologists are inclined to believe that by self-injuring a teenager unconsciously shows that he has internal problems.
This violence toward one's body is a repressed aggression toward the rest of society. This action is similar to medieval bloodletting - it relieves internal pressure. Often adolescents do more than just self-injury.
You can find inscriptions and commemorations on their hands. The child lets those around him know what is bothering him. This is accompanied by listening to depressing music and viewing relevant images on the Internet.
After self-harming, the adolescent feels a sense of relief, in some ways similar to that of a drug addict after receiving a lustful dose. This comes from the fact that the body produces endorphins, the happiness hormones, to dull the pain.
Duration of healing
The healing process depends on more than one factor. The depth of the wound, immunity and antibacterial treatment of the cut hand all play a big role.
An inflamed deep cut wound will take much longer to heal. A cut can take anywhere from a few days to a few weeks to heal. But if you injure the skin on your arm or leg over and over again, it will take a long time to heal. And, new wounds mean real problems.
In most cases, the desire to cut goes with the transition age, you just need to get over this period.
It is bad if a child wants to close his soul and immerse himself, because he has no one to talk to. Later it is fraught with the development of complexes, chronic depressions and other psychological problems, and this is especially true for older girls.
If you notice even minor scratches on the veins of the left or right hand, then remember that the most important thing to start with is to establish contact with others, and all problems will go away.
Navajas by the garter - knives by women in Spain
The famous Spanish folding knife navaja is known to all lovers of edged weapons. They were used not only by hot Spanish caballeros, but also by their black-eyed friends. Women of Seville, Malaga and Madrid often carried knives under their dresses, behind the garter of their stockings, and more than one Napoleonic soldier during the occupation of Spain in 1808-1814 received such a blade under the rib for excessive lustfulness.
For example, materials from one of the surviving criminal cases from those years tell of a girl who stabbed several French soldiers who tried to rape her. And Francisco Goya's famous painting "They Don't Want It" depicts an old woman sticking a knife into the back of a French soldier trying to rape a Spanish girl. Even a Spanish street song of those years had these words, "Don't mess with Lola, Lola has a knife, and she won't let herself be hurt."
"They won't," Francisco Goya
The garter knife entered the Spanish woman's lifestyle to such an extent that ladies from other countries began to imitate it, such as the Irish conwoman Elizabeth Gilbert, who for a time pretended to be Spanish. The Queen of Spain herself, Isabella II, used to say:
"I am a typical Spaniard, one of those who pray to the Virgin Mary of Paloma and carry a knife behind her garter."
These were the kind of women Napoleon's troops encountered during the siege of Zaragoza in 1808-1809, when almost for the first time regular troops were stopped during street battles by militiamen, among whom were many women. Not only did they throw themselves on the cavalry, ripping open the bellies of horses and slitting the throats of fallen soldiers, but they also fought as part of the artillery.
"The Defense of Zaragoza," Sir David Wilkie
Spanish women were not only ferociously militant, but equally jealous. For example, in one city, two young girls had a falling out with a guy and decided to settle their relationship in a knife fight. They went with their friends to the village, had lunch at a tavern, and then, sending all the uninvolved outside and stripped to the waist, they attacked each other with their nawahs. They inflicted so many wounds on each other that they both died almost immediately.
All these glorious traditions came with the emigrants to Mexico. Thus, in 1906 there was a knife fight between two women who disagreed over chickens. One of the ladies brought her infant son to the fight and told him that he might see his mother for the last time. And so it turned out, because a few minutes later she was lying on the ground, stabbed by a rival.
What are the dangers of injuries
Cuts (even a finger) and wounds can damage a large vessel, an artery, a nerve. If dangerous germs get in and the wound is not treated, you could even lose an arm or leg.
If gangrene or non-healing trophic wounds develop, they become a life-threatening source of infection. In medical practice, there are cases when a decision is made to amputate in order to save a person's life.
During the inflammatory stage, complications such as purulent abscesses and phlegmons occur. This occurs when the pus forming in the wound does not come out, but into the surrounding tissues or into the cavities between them.
If after an injury, the condition of the whole body began to deteriorate sharply, with fever and weakness, you need to see a doctor immediately.
Care for deep injuries
If the wound surface is considered large, even if the wounded person considers it subjective, seek medical attention. Cuts longer than 1.5-2 cm will take a long time to heal on their own, cause discomfort and are likely to cause complications.
Seek medical attention. The same applies to wounds that cause intolerable pain (a nerve branch may be damaged), or to wounds that are accompanied by profuse, persistent bleeding.
Medium-sized wounds and cuts are not always treatable by surgery. But suturing any wound will always heal faster.
Medical care includes: treating the wound, excising (cutting) the edges of the wound, stopping the bleeding, and suturing the wound. Sometimes stitches can be applied a little later, when the inflammation in the wound has subsided.
The wound dressing should be changed daily. Wet-dry dressings are used for the first week and then switch to ointment dressings.
Wet-dry dressings use antiseptic preparations. Wound ointments consist of antimicrobials and substances that promote healing. For example, the following ointments are used: levomikol, levosin, methyluracil.
In parallel, a prophylactic course of broad-spectrum antibiotics is prescribed.
How to hide
You do not want to answer unnecessary questions at school, from mom or neighbors, what are these suspicious bands on the forearms or legs of the child. The most important question becomes how to get rid of the characteristic scars. Camouflage small traces from the blade on the hand can be masked with an ordinary foundation of dense texture.
Methods are applied:
- Green dense corrector to disguise acne, and top with powder or foundation;
- Artistic tattoos;
- Bracelets, hairpins;
- Clothing with long sleeves.
Later, when the cuts have completely healed and healed, laser skin resurfacing can be done. But you still have to consult with a good dermatologist beforehand, how safe and effective the procedure will be.
Summary
If a boy or girl between the ages of 13 and 17 make cuts on their own hands with a blade, even if small and non-serious, not related to a suicide attempt, it is an alarming signal to everyone around them. How to remove scars on the body - an important question, but easily solved.
It is more important to find out why the teenager is doing it. Hiding the cuts under foundation, tattoos or, at worst, long sleeves is only a small part of the tremendous work that will need to be done with a teenager.
As practice shows, very rarely can parents handle the situation on their own - kids don't open up to mom or dad. The help of an outside, necessarily older man or woman is needed. This can be an older brother, sister, uncle or aunt, grandmother, even the coach of the sports club. Sometimes the only way out is to seek help from a professional. There are now special rehabilitation centers for children affected by the influence of social media communities, prone to self-injury and suicide.
Loss of consciousness
Due to profuse blood loss or fear of blood, a person who has received a deep cut may lose consciousness. Everyone should know what to do if a cut victim has fainted or is in a preconscious state, because such a condition can be life-threatening.
To prevent fainting, you should do the following:
- Open windows and doors wide, creating a draught and an inflow of air from the street;
- Open the collar of the victim, loosen the tie, remove jewelry from the neck, which may interfere with the flow of oxygen;
- Give the person a drink of cool water;
- Turn on nearby air conditioner;
- The victim should breathe deeply if he or she is still conscious;
- Massage the upper lip and earlobes of a person on the verge of fainting;
- Vigorous rubbing of the cheeks helps prevent fainting.
If these methods do not work, a absorbent cotton is soaked in ammonia and given to the fainting person to smell.
When a doctor is needed
If a person has cut himself or herself, a doctor should be consulted if:
- The wound is more than 2 centimeters deep;
- The blood does not stop for more than 10 minutes;
- There are pieces of glass or other objects in the wound;
- The person has been cut with a contaminated object;
- If the wound is inflicted by a child or an elderly person;
- Discoloration of the skin, numbness and pus on the second day;
- General hyperemia and weakness;
- Poor wound healing after a week.
If you get a cut with something dirty, you should get a tetanus vaccination.
