Husband, wife team to discuss ‘silent epidemic’ of self injury




Peter & Patricia Adler

Peter & Patricia Adler

California Lutheran University’s Center for Equality and Justice and Pearson Library will feature “Self-Injury: The Silent Epidemic,” presented by sociologists Patricia and Peter Adler at 7 p.m. Thurs., March 1 in the Lundring Events Center in the Gilbert Sports and Fitness Center.

Self-injury, or the deliberate destruction of one’s own body tissue, includes cutting, burning, branding and bone-breaking.

The lecture will draw from a 10-year study including 150 interviews with world- wide self- injurers and analysis of more than 30,000 Internet posts in chat rooms and other communiqués.

The free talk is the second in an annual series established by the estate of Lake Sherwood’s Paul and Eleanora Culver.

Patricia Adler, a sociology professor at the University of Colorado, Boulder, and Peter Adler, a sociology and criminology professor at the University of Denver, state that self-injury is not a suicidal gesture but a coping mechanism, a form of teenage angst, an expression of group membership and a type of rebellion.

They published their findings in “The Tender Cut: Inside the Hidden World of Self-Injury.”

For more information, call Adina Nack at (805) 493-3438 or email nack@callutheran.edu.


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