Self-harm can be confusing and bewildering for both staff
and service-users. Ideas about 'manipulation' or a 'cry for help' do little or
nothing to help prevent future self-harm. This course explores some alternative
notions and examines ways that support workers can make a difference in a
genuinely difficult situation.
There is a great deal that support workers and others can do
to help people who harm themselves. The trick is to be able to see past the
behaviour and to understand the person who cuts themselves, takes overdoses or
otherwise injures themselves.
In the past this sort of behaviour has been written off as
attention-seeking or as an attempt to manipulate workers and yet most self-harm
happens in secret and never comes to the attention of the staff. It's really
not about us. Something else is going on and the tired old notion that it is
merely 'behavioural' is both meaningless and irrelevant in a modern context of
deliberate self-harm.
The course covers:
Definitions of self-harm
A cry for help?
Is it all just attention-seeking?
Self-harm and suicide - are they linked?
Pain, the brain and self-soothing behaviours
The emotional purpose of self-harm
Helping people to 'get past' self-harm
Managing the risks
Dos and Don'ts
Please note - this is an educational seminar. It is not a group therapy session and we cannot make time for individual or group counselling or other intervention here,
