It’s not only teenage girls, and it’s rarely attention-seeking: debunking the myths around self-injury

Earlier this week The Conversation published an article titled, ‘It’s not only teenage girls, and it’s rarely attention-seeking: debunking the myths around self-injury’.  The piece explores the stigma towards those who self-injure and implications of this, such as reduced help-seeking behaviours through debunking the myths that we may hear around self-injury. 

The article outlines that despite common myths, males are just as likely to self-injure as women, instead of attention seeking people often self-injure in order to cope with intense emotion they are experiencing, and not all young people self-injure as a suicide attempt but rather a way of coping with intense emotion. It is important to understand more about self-injury as workers, so that we can best respond to young people; firstly making the young person feel safe that they can talk with us about self-injury, and then knowing a response to self injury is a different response than a young person who is suicidal.   

Go to “It’s not only teenage girls, and it’s rarely attention-seeking: debunking the myths around self-injury”

For more information on the topic of non-suicidal self injury, Dovetail produced a video in 2018 with Dr Madeline Wishart who outlines some key strategies for working with young people in this space. To access the video click here.