From the Sunday Times
Good idea or no?
You can buy clean razor blades at any hardware store. Just wipe them off with a bit of rubbing alcohol first.
I have talked with several cutters (all female) about their problem. One is a good friend with Masters degree in social work. They claim it is like a drug addiction and hard to stop. It sounds bizarre to me too although I believe them. They say they get a moderate rush out of it and more importantly, it provides instant escape from emotional issues they are experiencing.
I think you have to play the numbers and do a cost-benefit analysis here. What types of problems are caused when cutters improvise? How often does this happen? Will giving them cutting tools imply approval and provide more opportunity for them to do it. What if one commits suicide using a blade they wouldn’t have had access too?
Until you know those answers, it is hard to say if it is an overall good idea or not.
I’m not sure how that bit of knowledge addresses the question in the OP…should the medical community be providing those clean razor blades?
Why must societ at large, pay for the habits of others?
If I were addicted to cheese cake… should they pass it out?
How many different things should be passed out?
Wouldn’t it be infinately more helpful to pass out free ‘help’ as opposed to ‘clean’ ways to harm oneself?
Sure. Ideally you’d want ‘em not to cut, but if you can’t achieve that, or while you’re working towards it, a spot of damage limitation is better than nothing, and razor blades are cheap. I don’t think the suicide risk is much increased; everyone can lay their hands on something sharp at a few minutes’ notice - the question is whether they can be given as harmless an object as possible to do it with.
I listened to a half-hour radio broadcast on this a few years back, and came away with the impression that the self-harming community is just another special-interest group, with their own slang and so on. There are worse evils than the compulsion to inflict a series of shallow half-inch cuts on yourself, it seems to me.
This is pointless. If you want a clean blade you can get one yourself. If money is to be spent for these people it should be on treatment.
Even if this idea has some moral merit, practically speaking it’s a bad idea since it’d b akin to providing a food addict clean silverware. It’s something there’s no difficulty acquiring and one should be expected to do some things on your own.
You can reuse the same blade many times with proper cleaning, and you can get blades for such a cheap price economic hardship isn’t an argument.
I don’t believe cutters are sharing blades… as drug addicts sometimes share needles… and there is no way to ensure a ‘clean’ blade remains so, until the time of use… so passing out blades wouldn’t help there either…
As far as ‘reducing harm’… that is difficult… you are giving someone the means to produce harm…
The ‘they will do it anyway’ arguement doesn’t really work for me either… in that we don’t help people murder eachother… even though we know they will do it anyway…
The pathology behind cutting is the issue… not clean blades
In the OP, there a comparison between clean blades for cutters and clean needles for junkies. Clean needles are hard to buy if you’re not diabetic; you have to sign in and show ID.* Razor blades can be bought anywhere without anyone raising an eyebrow. So, Stentor 2.5 had a good point. Cutters don’t need a clean blade program, because they can easily buy their own, unlike junkies.
*I gave my dog injections for years. I had all the right paperwork to buy syringes, but I still got the goggle-eye from some pharmacists.
People, try reading for comprehension:
" Nurses want PATIENTS who are intent on harming themselves to be provided with clean blades…"
PATIENTS – specifically, those in custodial care, either in mental hospitals or prisons. Cutters, in such a situation, sneak in or improvise sharp implements when they are denied access to them – breaking glass, hiding razor blades, etc. I know a cutter who kept a razor blade taped inside her therapist-mandated journal – and she was there voluntarily.
A patient is anyone who sees any medical professional in that domain…
If you go to get a ‘good health’ check up… you are a patient, as much as if you were in the ICU
The article specifically refers to folks who go to the ED and then are released without psych intervention. Not custodial care.
An analogy might be to pass out a less harmful (e.g. fatty) substitute that somehow meets the need. Of course the inventor of that would already be selling it on the open market, a la clean razor blades.
Bad idea… wouldn’t want to encourage a dysfunctional behavior.
On the other hand, if the overall cost to society is reduced then perhaps it is not such a bad idea. Yet, I guess a better question might be “why would the cost to society be related to whether a cutter’s self-inflicted wounds became infected or not?” Por dio mio… The more compassionate we get, the more ridiculous it all seems.
In a medical care situation the medical staff need to take actions to prevent someone under their care from harming themselves. The providing of blades in such a situation would be borderline insane. Imagine the liability the hospital could suffer if one of the distributed blades was used by a cutter to take it one step further and they seriously cut themselves and began to bleed uncontrollably.
Actually that’s my answer to the “problem” of suicide- make it easy. Although I’d suggest rope as less messy and more likely to succeed. The only “problem” with suicide is that those people who want to keep other people alive against their will. To be or not to be is a valid question, and there’s no reason to think our answer is any better for them than theirs.
My niece went through a period where she was harming herself, and also swallowing 90+ tylenol at a time, binge-drinking, etc. I don’t think access to clean utensils would have made any difference at all in her case.
Not all self-injurers use a blade, anyway. They can use a common cigarette lighter, get it hot, then press it to their skin. They can rub their skin with a pencil eraser. They can poke themselves with a paper clip, or get the paper clip hot with the lighter, and hurt themselves with that.
OTOH, I have a lot of respect for nurses, and if they think they have patients who would benefit from access to sterile cutting instruments, I’m willing to take their word for it. Maybe all we really need to do is train the patients on sterilizing their own razor blades.
Of course, and the pathology needs to be addressed. But my understanding is that until you succeed in sorting out the underlying issue, the cutters will go right on cutting, and I’d be all for damage limitation; not as an alternative to finding out how to get them to stop, but as a control measure in the interim. We want them not to cut themselves, but if they must, it is in everyone’s interests that the cut be nice and tidy and sterile.
Your analogy with murderers doesn’t quite work. We refrain from helping murderers, not because it is unreasonable to help people do what they will do anyway, but because murder is an unreasonable thing to help. Since the question at hand is whether we should help self-harmers to self-harm in the least harmful way, we cannot assume as fact that it is indeed unreasonable to offer such help; that’s begging the question.