Self-harm and suicide risk

Self-harm is a coping strategy for unbearable affect, not a single disorder

Under acute psychological pain the brain's capacity for flexible problem-solving falls away: attention narrows, future-thinking collapses to the immediate present, and options reduce to whatever brings the fastest relief. Self-harm (cutting, overdose, burning and other methods) functions for many people as an emotion-regulation act: it discharges unbearable tension or converts diffuse psychic pain into something localised and controllable. Because the mechanism is affect regulation rather than a wish to die, self-harm and suicidal intent overlap but are not the same thing, and every assessment has to tease the two apart rather than assuming one implies the other.