Well, the people who compile these suidies live in a world of their own. They come from affluent backgrounds where they are full of university knowledge, but they have no practical experience of everyday people. It's like the old story.

Two top agricultural minsiters vistit a pig farm. After looking around one ask the farmer. 'Are your animals sheep or cows?'

But they can spell...

I can tell it's the Easter weekend - I'm ill, my boyfriend is ill, my best friend and his son are ill, my mum and stepdad aren't feeling too good...

Actually, according to Boing Boing and The New Scientist, the study was a little more interesting that that:

"Goth subculture may help self-harming kids."

By the way, I love your writing and can't wait to see your book on the shelves! -- Bethany (err, not a Goth!)

More likely that self harmers are more likely to be goths so there you go. Except for the self harmers that take up flower arranging or golf (both of 'em).

Now why is that statement 'so bleeding obvious?'

what is it about Goth culture that makes it 'bleeding' obvious that they would self harm?

Perhaps it's all the bias and assumptions made about them?

Actually the study highlights a lot of mental health issues amongst young people - something the medical community has really been dismissive of.

Newspapers tend to pick up on one catchy outcome of a study in order to get lay people to read about it.

Obvious? Because a large amount of the Goths that I know (and knew, back in the day when I was one of the shoulder length black hair\Slimelight\snakebite drinking Goth myself) were self harmers of one sort or another.

The study doesn't make any causative statement mind you (and is explicit of this), and while I might have a slight problem with how they performed the study (selection of the population), it actually seemed quite a decent bit of research.

But most ambulance folk could have told you what the research said.

(If that makes sense - for it is awfully late).

Again, while I used to support the goth brigade, I never self harmed. It did mark a period of depression in my life though. Strange how we gravitate towards it huh? Lots of goths in my college used to self-harm, and to break the gender stereotype, were mainly male.

therfore the next time we have a complex public health issue we should just talk to the ambulance folk?

Cool. That will sure make my job easier.

;-)

Well I've never been a "goth", but I did wear a lot of black when I was self harming. People who self harm often have low self-esteem and also suffer from depression and therefore tend to wear black and maybe not take a lot of care over their appearance.

There are some really good studies being done into self harm. Harm minimisation and Camelot's study into young people and self harm are 2 that I have been aware of recently.

One day at a time is possible nowadays. Cast your mind back to Easter 25 years ago - no cashpoints, no mini supermarkets, no 24 hour opening, no petrol stations open.
One day at a time then meant off milk, stale bread and no petrol in the Austin Allegro.

Hello, my first comment, but I've been reading for awhile.

I watched one of those school's programmes (the joys of working the weekends) not that long ago, that was about self-harm and talked to some teenagers who are/have been self harmers. The programme started by saying not all self-harmers are the same, and then featured four individuals that I would say were goths (although one called herself an emo-girl - which is different apparently)

If we'd been shown that when I was at school half the class would have used it as a chance for a bit of goth-bashing, and the other half would have attacked the negative stereotypes of people who choose to wear black.

I work with kids, I'd like to think they are getting the right support and advice to tackle difficult issues.

You see, since I work for my university as well as attending it, I can tell you what you already knew; that there are large numbers of students who self harm, and I would say that the majority of these don't include goth/emo styled people. In uni it's generally girls and generally triggered by homesickness after intake in september, and after all the holidays (I have a world of fun ahead of me after Easter). Do you think the lovely grant people will give me a few thousand to write it up?

So what we're saying is:
- quite a few teenagers identify as "goth"
- quite a few teenagers self-harm
- there is an overlap, but it doesn't seem to be causal or exclusive.

That sounds like a fair enough comment to me. Now batsgirl, do you reckon we should try and approach some gullible funding agency?

if all else fails I'll write it in tippex and nail varnish on my ironing board, and we'll go the Arts Council route.

;)

And in other news, studies have shown:
Bears more likely to shit in woods.
Pope likely to lean towards Catholosism and wear funny hat...

In other "bleedin' obvious" news, old meat generates maggots, marijuana causes insanity, asbestos is a great thing to put in buildings, and the earth is flat.

*this is where I roll my eyes and revert back to my default mode of intense misanthropy*