I think it probably varies between different subcultures as well as by geographic region. Among a lot of teenagers where I live, self harm is fairly well known, but only as an "emo" thing or as attention seeking. It's not that people haven't heard of it, or that it's taboo exactly, but it's viewed as more of an uncool fashion statement than a serious issue. And then there are the school administrators and parents who go along with these populations of teens, and tend to view it as a problem in teen culture that they need to fix (similar to 'sex bracelets' or certain drugs).
Where I'm from, I think that people seem to be fairly familiar with it. I had a friend in high school who cut (and was pretty open about it), another friend at summer school who actually cut in front of people, my sister cut for a while, and I know a couple people at school now who have very obviously self-inflicted scars. There was also the terrible moment in psych class when we talked briefly about SI, and people seemed to know about it, although in all fairness, I was probably the only non-psych major in the room, so it wasn't exactly a representative sample.
I think that within the medical community (especially among mental health professionals, but I think other health care providers as well) it seems to be fairly well known/understood, or at least not viewed unfairly negatively. I've definitely heard of people having bad experiences with doctors seeming resentful of having to treat a self-inflicted injury, and even with therapists not understanding it, but that's never been my experience. Not that I've had a lot of contact with professionals about it, but so far I haven't encountered anyone who I thought reacted inappropriately. The only time I've had non-psych doctors find out about it was when I had minor surgery and they insisted on putting an IV in my left arm. The anesthesiologist asked if I'd burned myself (okay, so there was no way those cuts looked like a burn, but who knows...) and then didn't say anything else about it, and the surgeon just commented that the bandaids I had over a couple of the cuts were cute. Neither of them made a big deal about it or treated me any differently afterwards (and the surgeon didn't mention it when she talked to my mom before I woke up), which I think was the appropriate response given that I was there for something pretty specific that had nothing to do with that, and I was already an adult at the time. The other people I've had contact with about it are my psychiatrist who I told about it, and my mom (who's a psychologist) who found out when she read my journal, and I think they've both handled it really well. They both seem to get that I'm not going to just stop doing it, and that it's not the primary issue (i.e. there's an underlying reason, which has to be dealt with first). My psych prof also seems to understand SI pretty well, although she doesn't know that I do it or anything so I don't know how she'd actually deal with it, but her explanation of SI in class was pretty good.
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