Self Harm / Live-Action TV

• 7th Heaven: In one episode, Mary catches Nicole (a new friend of her sister's) self-harming in her bathroom. Mary tells Eric (her father), who then tells Nicole's father. Eric gives him a card and a number to call so they can get help for Nicole. Nicole is then Put on a Bus.
• In 13 Reasons Why, Skye Miller is revealed to be a cutter. Skye tells Clay Jensen that the scars on her wrist is what she does instead of killing herself. This leads her to being taken to the hospital and then admitted to a mental health facility to deal with her problem.
• The Affair: After Noah sees scars on Alison's legs, she admits that she cuts herself to cope with the death of her son Gabriel. Later in the series, she's seen doing it again during an emotional breakdown.
• The Bad Girls Club: Zara cuts herself after getting into a fight with the rest of the members of the group.
• Beverly Hills, 90210: In one episode, Donna finds her assistant cutting herself, after suspecting it. She tries to help her, eventually persuading her to get therapy.
• Boardwalk Empire: Agent Nelson van Alden of the Burau of Prohibition is a deeply puritanical man who self-flagellates when he finds himself obsessively attracted to Margaret Schroeder.
• Buffy the Vampire Slayer:
  • After discovering she was Born of Magic, Dawn is discovered with a knife in one hand and a large gash on the other arm. She then asks "Is this blood?", suggesting that the incident was an attempt to see if she was human.
  • Faith is a bit of an atypical variant, as she's harming her body while her mind isn't actually occupying it. (As such, this could be argued not to be harming "herself" per se. That said, all of the self-loathing and rage of a self-harmer is present as she lays into her Buffy-occupied body.)
• Community has this on one episode, when Jeff admits to cutting himself in 7th grade to fake appendicitis, just so someone would care about him He still has the scar, 22 years later.
• Control Z: Sofia cut herself regularly in the past. Her arms are literally crisscrossed with old scars.
• Conversations with Friends: Frances cuts herself slightly after Bobbi leaves, and promises she won't again after Bobbi's noticed the wound later.
• Criminal Minds: On a campus where the team has been investigating a spate of murders, one of the girls there is shown cutting and deliberately trying to get herself killed by the murderer (like a suicide attempt).
• CSI: NY: The first victim in "Clue: SI" is a ballerina whom Sid discovers in autopsy had been cutting herself, in spite of being the star of the show she was currently practicing for.
• Degrassi: The Next Generation has had four self-injurers:
  • The first was Ellie, who began cutting herself after her father leaves and her mother started drinking again. Eventually, Paige noticed and convinced Ellie to see the school guidance counselor. She's implied to have stopped cutting at some point, although she says that she'll always be a cutter, even if she never does it again.
  • Later, Adam, a transgender boy, resorts to burning after his mother tries to force him to live as a girl.
  • Campbell cuts himself with an ice skate and jumps off a ledge and breaks his arm.
  • Zoe began burning herself as a way to cope with forcing herself in the closet.
• ER: In one episode, a self-harmer is treated at their clinic.
• Euphoria: Jules used to cut herself as a coping mechanism over her dysphoria and other issues.
• Ginny and Georgia: Ginny repeatedly burns herself to cope with stress and emotional pain. Marcus is naturally concerned on seeing her about to, and she later talks with him about it, saying she concentrates her feelings this way to release them. He gently suggests therapy instead. When she confesses this to her dad in Season 2, he has Ginny go into therapy. Georgia learns later, to her horror, and starts helping Ginny as best she can.
• Later on in Heroes, after Sylar has gained the power of shapeshifting, he ends up having a Shapeshifter Identity Crisis and at one point carves his name into his arm. It heals away, an extra bit of symbolism, but it still shows that he's struggling with this new power.
• One of the students in Higher Ground, Juliette, is a cutter and also suffers from bulimia.
• House: In one episode, House discovers his patient has been cutting herself.
• Intervention has featured self-injurers.
• Interview with the Vampire (2022): At the end of "...The Ruthless Pursuit of Blood with All a Child's Demanding", Claudia is so deeply traumatized from her Accidental Murder of her First Love and Lestat's Tough Love discipline that she extends her arm under the skylight during the daytime to hurt herself.
• Played with in Jekyll; Hyde will often do things that hurt him, but they usually hurt Jackman more (and in any case, he has an extremely high threshold for pain). In his first episode, he intimidates someone by slowly stubbing out a cigarette on his own palm, commenting "It'll hurt more tomorrow" (when Jackman will be back in control), and at a bar deliberately orders something that's "really bad for hangovers".
• Connor in The L.A. Complex deliberately crashed his car, poured boiling water over his arm, and set his house on fire.
• Law & Order: Criminal Intent: During one case, the daughter of a suspect is a cutter.
• Lie to Me: Megan from "The Royal We" reveals cuts on her thigh to Dr. Lightman.
• Mad Men: Ginsberg slices off one of his own nipples in the throes of a nervous breakdown brought on by the agency's new computer.
• Used in the "Pretty White Kids" sketch from Mad TV that makes fun at WB's contemporary melodramatic teen sitcoms. The pretty popular girl secretly cuts herself and keeps blades in her locker.
• Several episodes of M*A*S*H have dealt with a soldier shooting himself in the foot to get out of the fighting for a while.
  • This was a favorite ploy of Col. Flagg. In his first appearance, he has a broken arm. Another intelligence officer (a friend of Trapper's) arrives in camp and said Flagg probably did it himself with a hammer, just so he could be brought to the 4077th and spy on them.
  • In the same episode, when Hawkeye told Flagg he couldn't give him a medical excuse to stay at the 4077th, Flagg re-broke his arm by smashing an X-ray machine on top of it.
  • In another episode, Flagg arrives at the 4077th to question a soldier who was caught stealing medical supplies. Flagg lets him escape, then wrecks the tent he was being held in. He caps it off by smashing a phone over his own head, then running himself head-first into a cabinet, to make it look like the prisoner overpowered him and escaped on his own.
• Midnight Sun (2016): Kahina frequently cuts her legs and arms with a razor to let out pain over giving up her son long ago.
• Orphan Black: Helena has cuts on her back which makes it look like she has wings, and is seen cutting multiple times in season one. Tomas also self-harms at one point.
• Please Like Me: In the season 3 episode "Simple Carbohydrates", it is revealed that Hannah has been self-harming by hitting/bruising herself. This is shown multiple times throughout the season.
• The Punisher (2017). Among the other scars she got during a childhood injury, Dr. Krista Dumont is shown to have neat parallel scars on the inside of her arm, hinting at the psychological issues that later cause her to ally herself with Billy Russo.
• In a season 2 episode of Quantico, Dayana is seen making herself a cup of tea, but then she pours some of the hot water onto her hand.
• The Real World: In the Cancun season, Ayiiia is caught self-harming in the bathroom and later she cuts herself on the deck.
• Rome: Octavia is seen cutting herself in her tent and later her sleeves are pulled up to show the marks.
• Shadow and Bone. People who've make it across the Shadow Fold alive put a cut on their arm to show it. The Conductor, who smuggles Grisha across the Fold, has multiple scars and admits that dicing with death on a regular basis can take a toll on one's sanity. Unfortunately when he's captured the scars reveal his identity, given that there's no-one else who's made that many crossings and lived.
• Shadowhunters: In "Dust and Shadows", Alec is seen shooting arrows until his fingers bleed. He refuses to let anyone heal his hand when they notice the wound.
• Shameless (US):
  • In the penultimate Season 2 episode, Monica, the Gallagher matriarch (in name, not in practice mind you), is shown with her slit wrists on the floor during the Thanksgiving dinner. She is bipolar, and had not been taking her medication for some time prior to the incident.
  • In Season 4, Debbie Gallagher self-harms after a complicated breakup with her boyfriend.
• Sharp Objects: A major part of the plot, referenced by the title, is self-harm. Camille is revealed to have covered herself in scars spelling out disparaging words directed at herself. She can no longer wear short sleeves or skirts without betraying her secret.
• Skins: Cassie. It's never seen though, only mentioned.
• Star Trek: Voyager. In "Extreme Risk", B'Elanna Torres had been playing high-risk holodeck programs with the safety protocols removed. She's been treating the subsequent injuries herself so the Doctor won't find out what she's up to, but this trope is also implied when B'Elanna admits that she just wants to feel something, after receiving news of the annihilation of the Maquis back in the Alpha Quadrant.
• The Walking Dead: In "Them," Daryl puts out a lit cigarette on his hand.
• Word of Honor: Zhou Zishu purposefully put the nails in his body as a form of penance for all the people he killed.