Page 2 | Interview: Self Harm Awareness Day

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Interview: Self Harm Awareness Day

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SB: In your experience what are some of the reasons that people self-harm?
C: There are many reasons why someone may harm themselves. We have recently been collecting questionnaires, and some of the main reasons people describe is: to feel more able to cope, to get a release, to feel more calm, because they feel out of control and to punish themselves. This not a conclusive list.  The cause of self-harm is different entirely, this is what initially caused the person to start self-harming, and the the main causes that people have identified in our research are body image, work or school pressures, family difficulties, bullying and abuse, however most people told us they had more than one intial cause and anything painful or distressing can cause the onset of self-harm. What may seem little to one person may be a very stressful and traumatic thing to another.

SB: The subject isn’t often talked about much, so days like Self Injury Awareness day are good but how else can we help raise more awareness?
C: The way we are doing it at Harmless is by providing training, workshops and consultancy to friends, family members and professionals; we believe faithfully that if we provide education to these people then they will be more able to respond to the cases of self-harm that they come into contact with. This can make a huge difference in changing lives and improving health. It is also important to develop good networks of support services for people who self-harm, so that they can access support from a range of services that can provide flexible and sensitive support.

SB: Where can young people go for help if they are in fact self-harming?
C: The first place would be to a GP or healthcare professional at their school, college or university. Most places like this provide counsellors who would normally be used to seeing people who self-harm, or they would be able to refer the young person to such a service. What is important is that the individual finds someone that they can trust so they can start opening up and talking about their feelings. If they have somewhere for their emotions to go, then they are less likely to turn them upon themselves with self-harm, though this can be a slow process. Harmless can provide support to enable you to access these services if necessary and we do provide support by post and email. We also provide information and support to friends and family members as it can be distressing trying to support someone who self-harms.

SB: What are the steps that people can take to stop harming?
C: There are many things that people can start to bring their self-harm under control. There are various self help techniques that can be used to reduce the risk of self-harming. We advocate the use of the five minute rule. If an individual feels a strong urge to hurt themselves, we encourage them to 'postpone' their harm for five minutes. Usually, this will give the individual time for the emotions to start to reduce, enough that they can start to focus on alternative ways of coping. There are many other coping strategies that may be used, and we are able to provide these to individuals if they contact us. We also have details of coping strategies that might help on our website. Long term it is important that the individual starts to address the feelings and events that led them to self-harm in the first place. They might find talking to a friend or family member useful, or it might be that structured therapeutic support like counselling or cognitive behavioural therapy is needed. Either way, it is important that the focus is on the difficulties faced by the individuals. Self-harm is something that can be overcome.

SB: Do you know the average statistics of the amount of people who self-harm, is it quite a low number or otherwise?
C: There are a number of estimations about the prevalence of self-harm. Many of our statistics come from services that come into contact with people who self-harm, such as A & E departments. These statistics give us evidence that there are over 170,000 admissions to hospital every year from self-harm. However, many individuals who hurt themselves never require medical attention for their harm. For instance, if you bruise yourself or pull out your hair, it is very unlikely that you will need to see a doctor or go to hospital for treatment. So there is no record of the people who self-harm in private and never tell a soul. Self-harm, is therefore, probably massively underestimated, and much more common than we are aware. Certain studies estimate that 1 in 10 young people self-harm, but that this is much more common amongst lesbian, gay or bisexual teenagers. Self-harm does not discriminate on the basis of age, race, gender, disability or sexual orientation, so it is important that services are able to respond to all individuals who self-harm, young or old, male or female... etc. We are still to learn more about how many people within these groups self-harm, but it appears there are certain groups that are at a higher risk of self-harm such as Asian women, or LGBT groups - and for the age group 35 - 40 there are more men attending A & E for treatment of self-harm than there are women. We have to be aware that self-harm is something that affects all people, it is not limited to young people, or women. It is a problem that anyone can face at any time in their life.

Learn more about self-harm here or go to the website for Harmless.

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