BETHESDA, Md. -- When reality overwhelms some adolescent girls, they turn to cutting themselves with sharp objects. Enter the secret world of Hanna and Michelle, troubled teenage girls who cut themselves several times a day but now are trying to stop.

For the first time, through intimate video-diaries and closed-door therapy sessions, Discovery Health Channel takes viewers inside the nation's first residential treatment program for adolescents dealing specifically with "cutting," a baffling disorder that medical experts estimate affects 10 percent of American teenage girls. "Cutters: Self-Abuse" premieres on Thursday, March 27 at 8 PM (ET) on the Discovery Health Channel.

For three months, Discovery Health Channel cameras were granted exclusive access to Vista Del Mar Child & Family Services in Los Angeles, a non-profit facility where girls receive around-the-clock therapeutic support to develop skills that lead them to reach out to other people and break the cycle of cutting. Alarmingly, medical professionals report that self-injury caseloads have doubled in the last three years. As life becomes increasingly complex for teenagers, therapists say they expect the numbers to continue to rise.

The documentary displays the strength the girls find in peer group therapy, creating an atmosphere that gives them confidence and encourages them to talk about the underlying problems that drive them to injure themselves. At Vista Del Mar, the girls try to live as other teenagers do; socializing and going to school on campus while attending daily therapy sessions. Each girl featured in the one-hour special reveals the continuous struggle that takes place every day when the desire to cut their own body becomes strong. The girls and their families requested that their last names not be used. Eating disorders, hair-pulling and skin-burning are a few of the conditions that co-exist with cutting.

"Not every cutter is going to be suicidal because people who cut want to relieve some kind of tension that has built up within them and they feel a relief once they cut," said Elaine Leader, founder of Teen Line, who is interviewed during the program. "Once somebody uses that as a tension reliever or a coping mechanism, they tend to use it again and again and it becomes kind of an addictive behavior and that is the problem with cutting." Teen Line has been providing outreach services to the California community for more than 18 years and is affiliated with Cedars-Sinai Medical Center.

Source: Discovery Health Channel