Think of self harm as a symptom of a psychological injury. It IS a coping method, albeit an unhealthy one. Example: Imagine, and i choose this randomly, imagine you were abused as a child and later on in your adult life you remember this. And some nights especially the lonely ones, the memories of this continue to play in your head, till you cannot think or do anything else. Eventually you feel pretty suicidal - if only you could get the thoughts to stop. Nothing on tv can distract you, nothing you read or explore in the internet will distract you. Still those memories bouncing around in your head till you feel worthless. So you do something that forces your body to think about something else - you inflict pain on yourself - and suddenly what you are thinking about isnt the abuse memories, but is the pain you now have or the fact that it should hurt but doesn't, or that you need to clean a wound and put on a dressing ect - and this is what brings relief - you have escaped the torment, you have won over the thoughts of suicide, and now your body starts to feel a tiny bit of relief. Im sorry that this doesnt cover every self harmers behaviour, and i dont doubt that there are attention seekers who do that for their own reasons, but most self harmers arent suicidal, they are coping with painful thoughts and memories, even though its coping in an unhealthy way. Statistics will never be able to tell us how many people self harm, because the amount that end up in hospital is nothing compared to the amount of people who keep it hidden. Hope this is helpful in some way xx