Christina is writing an article about self-injury, and would ideally like to talk to a mother who found out her child was self-injurying. Christina would be especially interested in talking with sons or daughters who had been hurting themselves since primary school, but is open to hearing different stories from people who have self-harmed from a young age.

If you are interested in talking to Christina, and appearing in That’s Life magazine, and you’re in the UK, talk the idea over with your family and then email wedge@firstsigns.org.uk with the subject line of ‘Christina That’s Life’ and I will pass your details on.

Please only include your names (mother and child), your ages and your general location (town or city).

Christina means to write a sensitive feature article, and you can be in control of how your story is presented, as Christina intends to work closely with you to make sure you’re happy about the article. There is an opportunity to earn a considerable fee if your story is published, and if you’re willing to have photographs published you would earn more money, but it’s your choice, you don’t have to share more than you want.

Talking about your family in a national magazine is a big step, so you should talk it over with your whole family before deciding. You should decide if you’re happy to have your surname published and if you’re happy to share family photos, it’s all up to you.

If you’re interested in emailing Christina to ask any questions (you can pull out at any time) please email me on wedge@firstsigns.org.uk and I will pass your details on directly.

“Self-harm is when someone damages their body on purpose. It is not usually an attempt at committing suicide, but a way of expressing deep emotional feelings, such as low self-esteem. Although the physical effects of self-harm can often be treated easily, the underlying cause of the behaviour needs further attention.

“Our previous guideline on the short-term treatment of self-harm focused on the first 48 hours of an incident. This new guideline aims to help healthcare professionals support people that are known to self-harm in reducing and then stopping the behaviour.”

Dr Fergus Macbeth, Director of the Centre for Clinical Practice at NICE

The draft recommendations are now available for public consultation. Anyone wishing to submit comments should visit the NICE  website for more information on the consultation process. Draft recommendations issued for consultation include:

Working with people who self-harm

Health and social care professionals working with people who self-harm should aim to develop a trusting, supportive and engaging relationship with them and ensure that people are fully involved in decision-making about their treatment and care. Risk assessment: When assessing the risks of repetition of self-harm or suicide, identify and agree with the person who self-harms the specific risks for them, taking into account:

• methods and patterns of current and past self-harm
• specific risk factors and protective factors (social, psychological, pharmacological and motivational) that may increase or decrease the risks associated with self-harm
• coping strategies that the person has used to either successfully limit or avert self-harm or to contain the impact of personal, social or other antecedents

Care plans: Care plans should be multidisciplinary and developed collaboratively with the person who self-harms and their family, carers or significant others. The care plan should identify realistic and optimistic long-term goals, including employment and occupation and identify short-term treatment goals (linked to the long-term goals) and steps to achieve the

Interventions for self-harm: Consider offering six sessions of a psychological intervention specifically structured for people who self-harm with the aim of reducing self-harm. The intervention may have cognitive-behavioural, psychodynamic or problem-solving elements. Therapists should have significant experience of working with people who self-harm, and be able to work collaboratively with the person to identify the problems causing distress or leading to self-harm.

Treating associated mental health conditions: Provide psychological, pharmacological and psychosocial interventions for any associated conditions as described in the relevant NICE guidelines, for example, borderline personality disorder (NICE clinical guideline 78), depression (NICE clinical guideline 90),bipolar disorder (NICE clinical guideline 38) etc.

• Visit http://guidance.nice.org.uk/CG/WaveR/82/Consultation/Latest for details

Jim Hawkins was kind enough to invite our Wedge on to the show as well, via phone.

Here are the links you need to listen in:

• Jim Hawkin’s self-injury themed show on iPlayer
  (listen online, available until 23rd March 2011)
• The Jim Hawkins show
• Jim Hawkins on Twitter
• BBC Radio Shropshire
• Radio Shropshire on iPlayer
• Shropshire Mind
• No Harm in Looking – Shropshire Mind’s awareness website
• Shropshire Mind on Twitter
• Male self-injury at FirstSigns
• Help for self-injury at FirstSigns

It might be available on iPlayer soon after.

This series offers case studies of problems relevant to young people; from anorexia to depression, OCD to self harm, and ties into the “mental and emotional wellbeing” section of the National Curriculum.

Adolescence can be an emotional assault course. Yet teenage mental health is rarely discussed. In this powerful film produced by ORTVi, five young people phone into a night-time radio show to share their problems with host Aled Haydn Jones. While the radio show is staged, the callers are real, and so are their stories.

www.ortv.co.uk

Maverick Television are making a new documentary series looking into young people’s mental and emotional health – including anxiety, depression, OCD, phobias, self-injury and body dysmorphia.

The new ITV documentary series will follow the stories of several courageous young people (under 18 years) in the UK as they receive the help and care of mental and emotional health experts.

If you have experience of struggling with depression, anxiety, OCD, ADHD, an eating disorder, self-injury or any mental or emotional health issue in the UK, please get in touch. Young people involved in the documentary will have access to professional help and care from a network of centres, facilities and specialists.

Please email me on Wedge@firstsigns.org.uk with your first name, age and general location, and I’ll pass your details on.

Undertaking therapy of any kind is an important step to consider, and being filmed, sharing your life on television is a very serious step that you should discuss with your family and friends at length. Please seek the consent of your parent(s) or guardian(s).

The programme will cover a broad range of behavioural and mental health conditions in children and young people, from more minor problems such as anxiety and social phobia to more serious problems such as self-harm, depression and body dysmorphia.

The programme aims to follow a number of children and young people as they go through the process of being assessed and offered a course of therapy by the Anna Freud Centre’s team of expert clinicians or recommended therapists in their local area.  All treatment will be paid for and therapy sessions will continue after the period of filming has ended.

We are looking for some courageous young people who might be prepared to talk about their personal experience of mental health issues and to be followed as they go through the therapeutic process in the documentary series.  We are looking for males and females who are under the age of 20 and are from all regions of the UK and all types of social backgrounds.  We would need for you to have the consent of your parents to be involved and for you to be prepared to be filmed at home and within the therapeutic environment.  We hope that being involved in the programme would be a positive experience for both yourselves and your family and that it will hopefully raise awareness of such issues amongst the wider community.

Undertaking therapy of any kind is an important step to consider, and being filmed, sharing your life on television is a very serious step that you should discuss with your family and friends at length.

If you feel like you might wish to find out more about the programme, please get in touch with me on Wedge@firstsigns.org.uk – I will pass your details (gender, age, general location in the UK) directly on to Maverick Television for them to respond to you via email. Any approach made to the production team would be treated in the strictest of confidence and there would be no obligation to be involved in the programme.

They are looking for young people between the age of 13 and 18 who are happy to talk to about their experiences with issues they have faced, or are facing. These include:

· Compulsive Behaviour
· Depression , attempted Suicide
· Stress, someone who has suffered bereavement
· ADHD
· Self-harming
· Eating disorders

At this stage they would simply like to talk to young people about the issues they have been dealing with, then they would see who would be interested in being in the programme as a ‘phone caller’ to the radio show ‘The Surgery’. The most important factor is the person’s ability to be able to talk about something sensitive and difficult.

Although those who volunteer to take part may be still suffering and experiencing recovery, it’s really important that the experience of talking and being on TV wouldn’t cause any further difficulties or upset. ORTV will of course handle all of the interviewees with the utmost care and sensitivity.

Hannah at ORTV is very excited about the project and they are very keen to make a programme that will not only address the required elements for the National Curriculum for PSHE, but that will use real interviewees that will contribute substantially to the aim of helping young people to articulate their feelings and emotions and identify sources of help and information.

Before volunteering to be a part of this show, talk the idea over with your family and friends. You won’t have to use your real name but you will be on television. You can choose to be filmed in an artistic manner (basically, lots of close-ups so it’s hard to see it’s you). Talk it over with your loved ones.

Email me on Wedge@firstsigns.org.uk with your first name, age and whether you’d be talking about self-injury or some other issue (as suggested in the list above). I will pass your details directly to Hannah at the production company.

Wedge

We have the chance to feature in a magazine that champions diversity and the BME community.

So, we’d like to ask if you, as a member of the BME community, if you’d be willing to provide a quote about your experiences. We’d only need your first name, no picture.

• Perhaps you’ve felt it’s harder to ask for help?
• Perhaps you’ve experienced prejudices about self-injury from within the BME community?
• Perhaps you’ve experienced prejudices / racism outside of the BME community, and this has affected your self-injurious behaviour or the ways you seek support?
• Perhaps you prefer online help as you’re unsure how to access support in real-life?
• Perhaps you’re worried about how your family would feel about your SI?

Please <strong>email</strong> me now with a couple of sentences about your experiences or your fears: Wedge@firstsigns.org.uk

Sadly, there isn’t space to publish a lot, so I really would appreciate if you could send me a very short email with a ‘quote’ the magazine can use. Something short.

Please state your name in the way you want it published, just your first name if you like.

Thank you very much

Wedge@firstsigns.org.uk

Jeremy Vine

• Monday 16th November 2009, 1pm
• BBC Radio 2 , Jeremy Vine

We blogged a little when we noticed that the newspapers were calling it ‘assisted’ self-harm which we feel is a confusing term. No one is suggesting that health-care professionals should help a person hurt themselves, rather, we are simply saying that health-care professionals must recognise that they cannot tell a person to ‘stop‘ hurting themselves without first supporting that person to develop and learn new ways of coping with distress.

Self-injury is a valid coping mechanism, and when a person has nothing else to rely on, we should respect that the person has a right to hurt themselves, and that other people do not have a right to stop them. Other people’s care and concern should be expressed in positive support, not negative denial. Positive support includes helping a person move away from self-injurious behaviour over a period of time, learning new things to rely on, and working on the underlying issues.

We must not over-simplify this complex issue; we must focus on the underlying cause of distress and not merely the act of self-injury as a person seeks relief and release. We shouldn’t just assume this is all about cutting either – self-harm is a wide topic, and self-injury can take the form of banging and other ‘easy to do’ behaviours, so it’s not right to focus on ‘giving people razor blades’ because that’s not the whole story here.

Wedge will be saying that it’s not about being ‘allowed’ to hurt yourself, it’s about recognising that we shouldn’t tell people to ‘just stop’ before they’ve been given alternative ways of coping.

It’s a complex subject; certainly people in care need help to move away from self-harm, but forbidding people to use self-injury isn’t the only way forward.

No one is suggesting the need to hand out razor blades carte blanche. We are saying that, as a part of a written and agreed care plan with the patient, there may be times when a person hurts themselves, and that occurrence shouldn’t be punished or forbidden. No one is saying that self-injury should be an easy option, no on is saying that self-injury is the right choice; we’re saying that as a last resort, after discussion, after alternatives have been tried, after counselling, after time, after thought, after all the steps in a person’s care plan have been addressed, self-injury (and then self-care and med attention) may be a stage a person needs. The next stage would be emotional debrief, lessons learnt and counselling.

As part of a structured care plan, created with the individual for the individual, self-injury (and the reduction of reliance upon it) has to be dealt with in a positive manner, not simply denied as if it doesn’t exist.

Ingrained behaviour, habitual long-term behaviour cannot be changed  on ‘Admissions Day’ – these things take time. It is wrong to dis-empower a vulnerable person and forbid them their release and relief before supporting them to make new choices.

We can leave self-harm behind; it takes time and effort, but we can make new choices for ourselves – please help us make these choices, don’t make them for us.

]]> http://blog.lifesigns.org.uk/2009/11/firstsigns-on-bbc-radio-monday-16th-nov/feed/ 4 http://blog.lifesigns.org.uk/2009/10/assisted-self-harm-isnt-assisted-at-all-uk-news/ http://blog.lifesigns.org.uk/2009/10/assisted-self-harm-isnt-assisted-at-all-uk-news/#comments Fri, 30 Oct 2009 14:25:01 +0000 Wedge http://blog.firstsigns.org.uk/?p=767 The Guardian, and other newspapers, are reporting that certain hospitals and mental health centres are ‘assisting’ people to self-injure, and going so far as to provide tools to hurt yourself with.

• Link

This is sensationalism. The newspapers are whipping up a storm. We have advised the NHS for many many years that when supporting a person in long-term care that it’s impossible to deny that person the right to hurt themselves. Yes, the right.

It’s counterproductive. If you take their control mechanism away, they just rebel and find other ways to hurt themselves in desperation. By recognising that self-harm a coping mechanism, health care professionals can then provide new ways of coping, and empower a person to make new choices.

FirstSigns supports the idea of respecting people’s choices, even if that choice is not ideal in the opinion of the doctor. FirstSigns supports the idea of providing privacy, and clean tools and materials for self-care after self-injurious behaviour. FirstSigns believes health care professionals should be protected from the distress caused by a person’s self-harm.

(Wedge]