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There is a silent epidemic lurking in the shadows, hidden deep away by the more than two million people who suffer the horrors of self-injury.

Amazingly, experts warn that there's a strong link between this tragic plague of "cutting" and eating disorders.

Paulette Pasquale is a clinical nurse specialist at S.A.F.E. (Self-Abuse Finally Ends) Alternatives, the only in-patient self-injury facility in America.

"Most of the patients that come through here also have had eating disorder symptoms at some point in time -- they're either still struggling or they have struggled in the past," Pasquale tells eDiets.com in an exclusive phone interview from MacNeal Hospital in Berwyn, Illinois.

"People who aren't comfortable expressing their emotions in appropriate ways find other ways of coping with behaviors to manage their stress and feelings.

"Eating disorders is one way... self-injury is another way... substance abuse is yet another."

Ellen DeLalla, a registered nurse, licensed mental health counselor and owner-administrator of the Center for Eating Disorders at the Family Behavioral Center in Delray Beach, Florida, says about one in four of her current patients who suffer from bulimia have a history of self-injury.

"Purging and cutting are the same type behavior," she says. "Both are the purge of negative emotions that the person cannot handle."

"A vital component in treating eating disorders is the recognition of an accompanying personality disorder. Self mutilation is part of the personality disorder."

Jan Hart, education and research director at S.A.F.E, estimates that 75 percent of their patients come in with concurrent eating disorders.

"The self-injury helps continue the process of isolation and detachment that an eating disorder already started," she says, adding that they don't like to refer to self-injurers as cutters.

"It's kind of like the next level in a sense. Generally people play back and forth. It's rare to see them both florid at the same time."

But Hart stresses that just because someone has an eating disorder doesn't necessarily mean they will resort to self-injury.

According to S.A.F.E.'s Pasquale, the average patient is 31 and has been hospitalized about 21 times as a result of self-injuries.

The whispered-about disease has only recently gone public. In fact, there's an educational push underway this week to promote National Self-Injury Awareness.

According to an article in the San Francisco Chronicle, some big-name celebrities -– Johnny Depp, Fiona Apple, Courtney Love -- have come out of the closet, admitting to being cutters.

Self-injurers frequently slash and jab their body with sharp objects or resort to other devices of damage like lighters and lit cigarettes. Many start as early as age 12.

These tragic self-injurers often aren't even aware of the damage they've done: Burning, head-banging, bone breaking, hair plucking or flesh cutting. They often feel desperate or inadequate.

If it seems hard to believe, just search the web for "self-injury." There are hundreds of sites devoted to this all-too-real horror.

Morten Wulff, a student at the Technical University of Denmark, assembled Psyke, an educational website featuring first-person accounts, shocking photographs (like the one they provided for this story) and other information on self-injury.

Research shows:

Most victims of the growing epidemic are females who've suffered abuse or neglect.

Three out of four self-injurers have a fetish for cutting. In one of the most frightening behaviors, they slash their bodies with razor knives, scissors... any skin-ripping object they can get their hands on.

Frequently shrugged off as "cat scratches" or "a fall," the nasty gashes and deep wounds scar young women mentally and physically for life.

"It is so difficult for people who don't self-injure to understand what it's all about," says former sufferer Deb Martinson, who heads a support group through her Secret Shame website.

"You get into a state of being hit with an overwhelming sadness, depression, loneliness.

"Self-injurers usually stumble into this by accident. They learn that by hurting themselves -- causing pain and seeing blood -- their level of anxiety drops."

The pain of self-injury is all too familiar to the 36-year-old from Seattle, Washington.

Her terror lasted three and a half years. Unfortunately, for many this addiction to injury lasts a lifetime.

Like drugs or alcohol, self-destruction is highly addictive. In Bright Red Scream (Viking), journalist Marilee Strong describes the blood bath as a release.

"It's like watching the bad stuff inside of you flow out," she writes. "Then there is the healing aspect, which is just as important as the cutting."

Some tell-tale personality traits: Low self-esteem, depression, hypersensitivity to rejection, impulsive actions and chronic anger or stress.

"One of the hardest thing to accept is that it's a choice," Martinson says. "It may not feel like a choice but when you're doing this, you've chosen this as a way to cope maybe because you think there isn't another way to cope."

Thanks to counseling, Martinson's wounds are finally starting to heal.

"The main thing I learned was other ways to deal with feelings and things bothering me. It's not easy work but you eventually start to realize you can go through whatever is going on in life without resorting to cutting."

For more information, call S.A.F.E. at 1-800-dontcut or visit their website at www.safe-alternatives.com.