What do you recommend for helping scars heal? Particularly wrist scars on a teenager.

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I'm hoping the wise and deeply knowledgeable posters on here can help. DD is coming home for Easter and recently confided how upset she was that the scars on her wrists weren't healing.

Yes, sadly is self-harming which we hadn't realised although we know about other mental health issues.

I'd love to give her a cream or something which might help them fade? Don't mind how expensive - this is important.

Is there anything that's really good?

Bio-oil has good PR but thats all it is.

If you want something to actually work you want silicone gel or plasters.

Agree, silicone gel, but massage (with whatever you can put your hands on, bio oil is fine, as is any other bland moisturiser) and UV protection are also absolutely crucial, as mentioned by a couple of well informed PPs.

I had plastic surgery on my face about 15 years ago, to remove and disguise scar tissue. The plastic surgeon recommended silicon gel massaged in daily. Very effective - I think both the gel and the massage are important.

Thank you all and Strawberrylipstick your perspective is very helpful, and I suspect (and hope) that the way you now talk is how my daughter will be in ten years or so... to you, tis a tough journey and one with no shame, though it feels like that to a teenager

I have had several surgeries to remove tumours and have tried a lot of things to improve healing. The best one is by far pure rose hip oil. And protecting the scar from sun for a year.
Massage several times per day with their rosehip oil and time will help

Bio-oil
Mederma
Wheatgerm oil

"Out of suffering have emerged the strongest souls; the most massive characters are seared with scars." - Kahlil Gibran.

That quote is my permanent Whatsapp status.

I only have a couple of physical scars. They're on the inside of my lower left arm so never immediately visible unless a nurse is trying to get blood or something. I sort of 'style it out'. Nobody has ever asked about them. I have an explanation of how they came about prepped, though I've never had to use it. I don't owe anyone the full truth about them. Like it or not, it's better to say that you fell off your bike when you were 6 than to say that you cut yourself. I've found that when I don't try to cover them up, people just presume that the cause was something innocuous.

More importantly, is she getting some treatment?

I've also heard of girls getting tattoos to disguise their scars.

From my personal experience, if you don't appear ashamed of them, nobody mentions them.

For comparison, if you have the battered wife. If she jokes 'ye, my DH beat me up over the weekend haha' people will just join in the joke, thinking that it's more likely that you fell over while drunk. If you say 'I fell down the stairs', then nobody will believe it. Sometimes, laying the truth out there without explanation is the best plan.

I have had 2 incidences in my life where people have questioned my injuries.

Aunt when I had a black eye. My mother had punched me. My mother immediately responded that I had hit my eye with a cupboard door.

Work meeting where I was wearing this sort of light-reflective foundation. Nobody saw a thing until we went into a meeting in a dark room to project a presentation. While waiting for one of the managers to arrive, another manager turned around, noticed my glowing blue/black/purple bruising and exclaims 'Jesus, what the hell happened to you?' All I could say was 'don't mention the war'.

Just in case anyone uses light reflective makeup when bruised - it doesn't bloody work in the dark!

It's fucking awful in a professional job to have to show up and present something to 30 people or something the morning after the night before when half your face is black and your eye is swollen shut.

You are judged. You are deemed less than. You are viewed as weak. So if you can't get the fuck out, then you style it out. I've gone to work so many times with injuries and just never mentioned it! I have found out later that they all knew and just didn't comment. A lot of people want to rescue you. Just get on with your job and end of! That your life outside is torture is not something you take to work with you.

It's the exact same with scars from self harm. Style it out. Ask me no questions and I'll tell you no lies.

I should correct that. Everyone 'suspected' that I was being beaten (Christ, the bruises were there), but I covered it so well. They could not compute my professional demenour with that of a beaten woman, so they presumed that I wasn't. They knew me as a cheerful professional and competent woman. While I think that the may have wondered about the bruising, to be honest, I don't think that it crossed their minds that I was a victim on domestic violence. I suppose that I didn't fit their definition of a victim. I don't know.

I'm just thinking back over the time when I worked and was being beaten up. Everyone I worked with was male (the reason why I was beaten up usually). They never questioned my competence at work at all. We all just got on with things. Perhaps female colleagues might have tried to speak to me about it, but I think that would just have distressed me. To get away is sort of a battle that you have to fight alone in the end. It's about leaving in your mind. You could go to Outer Mongolia and still come back for more. It's a very personal journey that only you can make, and you voyage alone. When you come out the other side, it's worth it, but even the fear of setting off on that voyage can be tough!

OP, I'm so sorry. I got mixed up with what I was reading so some of this is not relevant to your dd. Apologies again. I was on the wrong thread half the time. Ok, lol, time for bed!