A CONTROVERSIAL report into teenage self-mutilation calls for "rage rooms" where youngsters can vent their frustration and smash things up.

There is also a call for confidential "places to go" providing youngsters with medical back up if they have to harm themselves.

A startling increase in the number of youngsters who burn and cut themselves has prompted a North-west community service to demand action.

New research reveals the self-mutilation is not, as previously thought, a cry for help rather but a means of preventing doing themselves further damage.

"Who's Hurting Who" is the report of a research project on suicide and self harm among young people, funded by the Department of Health's Mental Health Task Force. It is based on extensive interviews with teenagers at 42nd Street, a community based service in North Manchester

The report argues that by ignoring what young people say about their behaviour, helping services are in danger of making the situation worse - driving some young people into suicide attempts.

A recurring theme in interviews with young people is that self harm can be a way of gaining control over their lives.

The need may be to escape from sexual or physical abuse or from a violent relationship, to assert an alternative sexuality, or to find some direction in a life dominated by joblessness and poverty.

Helen Spandler, the author of the report, says: "Young people may have had most of their life controlled by others and by circumstances outside their control.

"They may have been abused, locked up, in care, chronically ill, bereaved.

"Harming themselves may seem like an odd way of coping but it may feel like the only control they have over their life and body."

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