Healing the Wounds

It’s a phenomenon that rarely makes headlines. Nevertheless, the statistics are staggering. Approximately 2 million Americans--including one in every 200 teenagers--cut themselves to relieve their emotional pain.

“Most cutters are not internally articulate,” says Steven Levenkron, a New York-based psychotherapist who wrote the book, “Cutting.” “So when [they] feel a creepy feeling coming on, [they] create pain ... Since they are in charge of the pain, it is a different experience than when someone else hurts you.”

This form of self-loathing and self-mutilation is the topic of a new USA drama, “Secret Cutting,” which airs Tuesday. Kimberlee Peterson stars as Dawn, a bright 16-year-year-old high school student who’s struggling to fit in both at school and at home. Her mother (Sean Young) is overbearing. Her father (Robert Wisden) is withdrawn. As Dawn represses her feelings and her self-hate, she begins to secretly cut and burn her body.

Rhea Perlman is featured as the therapist who helps Dawn begin to talk about her feelings in the film, penned by Dennis Nemec and directed by Norma Bailey.

Before production began, director Bailey opted not to talk to Levenkron, who was a consultant on the movie. “I did read a couple of books, mainly so I could help the lead actress with her role,” says the Canadian-based filmmaker. “You are not making a documentary ... It’s my job to make it work as drama.”

Peterson said she believed she also needed to keep her research on the problem to a minimum. “I don’t think somebody who cuts themselves, that they do research on it before they do it,” explains the actress. “They just kind of go for it. That’s how I wanted my character to be. I didn’t want her to have all the psychology of what was really going on.”

She did identify with Dawn’s feeling of alienation in school. “I had a hell of a time going to grade school and middle school, and even high school,” she says. “I was like 4 feet tall [in high school] and really skinny. I had no boobs, which I still don’t have now, freckles, big ears and I was pigeon-toed.”

Unlike her character, though, Peterson has a lot of friends and a “real good mom” who helped her through her school years.

Most cutters, says Levenkron, are females, with 90% between the ages of 11 and 22. Approximately, 6%, however, don’t start until their 30s or 40s.

Levenkron says he’s treating three families who are quite similar to the one depicted in “Secret Cutting.”

“When [screenwriter] Dennis Nemec and I got together, I gave him material that would cover the most common denominator of cutters and their families.”

Though they are inflicting pain and damage to their bodies, most cutters don’t want to commit suicide. In fact, Levenkron says, “This is very ritualistic behavior ... 99% of the time, this is not an attempt at suicide. However, there are occasional accidental deaths.”

Levenkron estimates that half of those he’s currently treating were former anorexics. “That doesn’t mean that half of anorexics become cutters. But I found it interesting that people who gave up their anorexia resorted to cutting because they still need a way to use their own bodies to somehow assuage all of their pain. They couldn’t do it in conversation,and they wouldn’t do it on the hotline.”

The good news, he says, is that within in a year of commencing therapy, most of his patients stop cutting. One of his most successful therapies is getting his patients to e-mail him before they start to cut. “So they have made words [of their pain],” says Levenkron. “It’s getting their trust so they can use me instead of their skin. I am competing with cutting and as a result, they learn how to talk and cry and complain to me instead of cutting in the direction of themselves. “

After the airing of “Secret Cutting” there will be a public service announcement, featuring Sean Young, which will offer more information about the subject.

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“Secret Cutting” can be seen Tuesday at 9 p.m. on USA. The network has rated it TV-14-D (may be unsuitable for children younger than 14 with special advisories for coarse dialogue).