National self-injury awareness day: social justice, user-led interventions and challenging stigma

Self-injury – or self-harm as it is commonly known – is a coping mechanism whereby someone causes direct pain and/or injury to their own body. It is stereotypically associated with many of the following: ‘mental illness’, adolescent girls, Emos/youth subcultures, ‘personality disorder’, suicide, attention-seeking and sometimes violence or danger towards others. However, none of these accurately reflect the experience: self-injury is usually a private and secret experience, it is a means of staying alive rather than attempting to die, it is self-directed not other-directed, and it is not specific to any one group of people.