Hmmm...like heroin junkies? Not being a smart ass. Serious. Heroin junkies will shoot up between their toes (as the legend goes) to avoid detection.
This to me seems like manifestation of shame, which is essentially the state of one's mind/heart/spirtit/whatever disagreeing with one's actions.
Actually, I just consider that mostly the desire to not get caught doing hard drugs illegally. They don't want to be stopped or punished.
Cutting isn't illegal... although there's a chance (like with the heroin) that someone will see the scars and "interfere." Neither addicts OR cutters want people to interfere with their behavior, no, not at all. So no, I don't think cutting is usually for attention; if it is for attention, it's being done not for typical cutting reasons but in service of some other neurosis.
I actually felt better after cutting in some ways. The pain gave me clarity and I felt some energy release from it. However, i also kept thinking there must be some other way of working through the pain and emotional turmoil aside from harming myself.
He really didn't have a good reason, most of it was because he wanted to show someone else how much he hated a specific situation between the two of them. I told him that made no sense to me...
I actually do sort of get it, but I am unable to articulate why it is effective that way or why your friend could not express himself in different modes of communication to the person he was having trouble with.
I did not think he was suicidal, he did not fit the profile at all.
I don't think cutters are suicidal either, per se. It's not a killing mechanism, it's a coping mechanism; you only try to cope if you are trying to survive and fear you will not, so extreme measures are called for. Maybe sometimes the cure will end up being SO extreme that someone does die, but I consider that more a sign that the pain was very dire.
Still, the cutting can cause physical damage, so it's still better to ultimately discover the root cause of the emotional emptiness/pain and deal with it somehow.