BROOMFIELD, COLO. — Body modification enthusiasts—individuals who undergo piercing, tattooing, and/or scarification—have a high rate of self-reported prior suicide attempts, David Lester, Ph.D., said at the annual conference of the American Association of Suicidology.
This observation from a large cross-sectional study of body art aficionados raises an intriguing question: Is body modification a marker for increased risk of suicidality, or is it instead a sort of substitute activity?
“As body modification is now becoming socially acceptable, maybe it's something that high-risk adolescents could do to reduce their suicidality, noted Dr. Lester, professor of psychology at Richard Stockton College of New Jersey, Pomona.
“Of course, that's a question that would require a longitudinal controlled study to properly answer,” he said.
A detailed survey of some 4,700 individuals who frequent a Web site devoted to hard-core body modification (www.bmezine.com
Thirty-nine percent of respondents indicated they had only contemplated suicide; 27% responded that they had made one or more attempts.
“That strikes me as high,” Dr. Lester said.
The median age of the survey respondents was 21 years. Eighty-eight percent were white, and roughly 45% were students.
Fifty-six percent of the body modification enthusiasts described themselves as heterosexual, 38% bisexual, and only 5% homosexual.
The type of body modification procedure individuals had undergone appeared to be related to their suicidality history. So did the anatomic site they selected for alteration.
For example, 27% of men and 46% of women with a pierced eyebrow—a relatively common form of body modification—reported previously attempting suicide, compared with 18% of men and 32% of women without an eyebrow piercing, he said.
Twenty-four percent of men with a tongue piercing reported previously attempting suicide, compared with 18% of those without this body modification. Given the very large sample size, that difference is highly statistically significant, Dr. Lester said.
Similarly, 37% of women with a pierced tongue reported prior deliberate self-harm, compared with 30% without a pierced tongue.
Altogether, of 25 possible anatomic sites for piercing, 9 were associated with increased suicidality.
Tattoos at nine specific anatomic sites were associated with an increase in self-reported suicide attempts.
“I would have predicted a lesser association with suicidality, given how much more popular tattoos have become since several decades ago, when they were viewed as deviant,” Dr. Lester observed.
Some of the highest rates of suicidality were found among individuals who engaged in scarification. For example, 39% of men and 48% of women with scarification of the upper arm or shoulder reported one or more prior attempts at suicide, compared with 18% and 32%, respectively, without this particular body modification.
Frequenters of a Web site devoted to body modification constitute a rather skewed survey population.
As a sort of quick-and-dirty assessment of survey reliability, Dr. Lester checked to see if three well-established associations in the suicidology literature held true among respondents to the body modification survey.
All three rang true among the body modification crowd: Female respondents reported more suicidality than males, heterosexuals reported less extensive suicidality histories than homosexuals or bisexuals, and individuals who said they have been depressed were more likely to report prior attempts at suicide.