Pamela Sorensen's introduction to cutting was a phone call from her son. He had driven his 19-year-old sister, Rondi, to a hospital because the wounds in her arm were so deep. It wasn't the first time she had hurt herself. Nor the last.

"At first, I was in shock and disbelief," she said. "It was very frightening. . . . The first thing you think of is suicide."

Sorensen couldn't get answers from her daughter as to why she would hurt herself, so she called a crisis line. The voice on the other end was calm and reassuring. "I just took a deep breath and tried to deal with it."

Cutting was another in a long list of self-destructive behaviors in which Rondi, now 22, had engaged. She used drugs. She had numerous body piercings. She burned herself with heated safety pins. She frequently ran away from home.

Deseret Morning News graphic Story continues below Self-inflicted violence Requires Adobe Acrobat.

She also suffers from borderline personality disorder, panic/anxiety disorder and ADHD.

Pamela Sorensen and her husband, Rolf, immersed themselves in the study of mental illness to better understand how to help their daughter. They now lead a weekly discussion group as volunteers for the Utah chapter of the National Alliance for the Mentally Ill.

"I wish I would have known then what I know now," she said.

Rondi Sorensen said her self-injury began at a young age. She recalls banging her head against walls and giving herself eraser burns in elementary school. It worsened with age.

Sorensen struggled to find herself in her teenage years. She didn't know who she was. She wondered why bad things happened to her. She was depressed. She didn't feel like her parents listened. She turned to drugs, but that only amplified her sadness and anger, and then she would burn or cut her skin.

"I would forget about the emotional pain for a while, quite some time actually, depending on what I did to myself."