What has a 17th Century treatment for erectile dysfunction got to do with ligature incidents in the 21st Century?
Back then male hanging victims were observed having erections during their executions and it is believed that this observation is what led to some people practising what is called Auto-Erotic Asphyxia (EA)
EA is the deliberate action of restricting blood and oxygen supply to the brain with a ligature to create a euphoric high which combined with masturbation can provide an intense sexual high as the brain releases a very strong pain relief chemical called endorphins along with the pleasure released during orgasm.
EA is not talked about widely outside professional circles for fear of putting ‘ideas into peoples heads’ especially those that are young and impressionable and is also thought to be under-reported due to parents ‘disguising’ their child’s death as suicide by ‘sanitising’ the scene removing any pornographic material etc before alerting the authorities.
Whilst engaging in EA participants usually set themselves up with a fail-safe mechanism such as slip-knot or something close by to stand back up onto in order to self-rescue before they lose consciousness.
However, unfortunately sometimes the person is unable to rescue themselves due to onset of weakness or unconsciousness and end up hanging themselves to death.
Although no statistics have ever been recorded in the UK for these types of deaths a study in the USA estimated that there are between 500 and 1000 deaths every year from EA. A study of 135 such cases by the FBI determined the average age of victims to be 26.
What does this mean for you?
If you are looking after people in health and social care whether they are young people or adults, a ligature attempt may occur not as an episode of self-harm or a serious suicide attempt but as an act of sexual experimentation. Unfortunately, this is a type of sexual experimentation that could have fatal consequences for someone engaging in it.
Although the subject of EA is not widely publicised a quick search of social media sites will pop up references to this practice including imagery and how-to guides. For example, just now I typed the term into Instagram and there were 1000+ posts listed on the subject.
Your clients may well have unrestricted access to the internet and social media so it is possible that with a little bit of searching they could find out information about and decide that this type of ligature incident is something they want to try.
Mark Wigley is owner of markwigley.online and Director of Meducate Training Ltd and provides classroom ligature training online ligature e-learning and ligature ‘train the trainer’ via live webinar and as a classroom course.
