Self-directed violence is always wrong

The argument

Proponents of this position argue that a claim about violence must include the violence people direct at themselves, and that self-harm does not become permissible simply because the person harmed is the person acting. Self-harm is associated with psychological stresses and disorders such as depression, social anxiety, and PTSD, and it is not rare: 17% of adolescents and 13% of young adults have engaged in self-injury at some point in their lives. People who engage in self-harm often have poor coping skills. Self-harm is how they deal with psychological pain and manage difficult emotions; not knowing how to regulate or understand their emotions, such as feelings of worthlessness, anger, or loneliness, often contributes to their need to self-harm. The argument accepts that account in full, and holds that it does not change the verdict. Such a type of violence is wrong, but there is a valid reason why it happens in the first place — and explaining why someone reaches for it is not the same as showing that reaching for it is right. Though individuals who self-harm may have difficulty seeing how their actions are wrong, which is itself part of what the distress does to a person, most people understand that self-harm is wrong. Proponents point to how people actually behave as evidence that the judgment is widely shared. Many people do all they can, through individual care, campaigning, or raising awareness, to stop their loved ones from self-harming. Nobody organises to prevent something they consider morally neutral, so the effort itself expresses a conviction that the harm is a wrong worth averting — and the effort is not futile, since with rising awareness, offering help, and advising doctor's counsel, such violence can be prevented. If violence remains wrong even where the one inflicting it and the one suffering it are the same person, then its wrongness does not depend on the victim being somebody else. Because self-directed violence is always wrong, violence is always wrong.

Premises

Counter-arguments

Self-harm is often a cry for attention because some people believe that a way to move forward and discipline themselves is to punish themselves for any inconvenience. Not all those who engage in self-injury have deep psychological issues. The influence of online images on self-harm has promoted it as a trend in young people rather than serious issues. According to evidence, 51% of young people who report self-harm had previously engaged on the internet searching for self-harm related content. In such cases, media exposure on the Internet leads to self-injury rather than not having good coping mechanisms.

Rejecting the premises

[Rejecting P1] The prevalence figures are given without a source, and the classification is the argument's real difficulty. Self-injury is harm directed at oneself, while the question concerns violence in the ordinary sense of force directed at another. Treating the two as one category is what allows the argument to generalise, and it is the step least defended. [Rejecting P2] "Wrong" is doing two jobs at once. That an act is harmful, and that people wish to prevent it, does not establish that it is a moral wrong; clinical practice generally treats self-injury as a symptom to be understood and treated rather than as wrongdoing to be condemned. The premise's own acknowledgement that there is a valid reason why it happens sits uneasily beside the verdict it draws. [Rejecting P3] Care and prevention are directed at suffering, not at fault, so the fact that people try to stop those they love from self-harming does not show they regard it as a wrong. And even granting every premise, the conclusion does not follow: that one category of violence is always wrong says nothing about self-defence, the defence of another, or force used by police or in war — the cases on which the general claim actually turns, and which the argument never reaches.