Self-Injury Resources

This post is a follow up for those who attended my breakout session at History Maker yesterday on the subject of self-harm and requested more resources. Workshop The Crisis & Trauma Resource Institute puts on an excellent 2 day workshop on this subject. I highly recommend this for any leader who is working with young people. This workshops covers a lot of material, everything from what is self harm, to how to identify, to how to react to it, to how to counsel a youth through it, how to talk to the youth's parents about it, bah blah blah. I found this extremely helpful. Here is the link to their website. http://www.ctrinstitute.com/wkdescrip.html#selfinjury Their workshops travel across most major canadian cities, and come to vancouver every few months. Books Here are some books that I have heard good things about... Healing the hurt within; Understand self-injury and heal the emotional wounds; Sutton,J. Hope and Healing for Kids who Cut; Penner, M. Stopping the pain; A workbook for teens who cut and self-injure; Shapiro, L.E Websites to check out You will remember my t-shirt? www.twloha.com I've found that youth can easily identify with the story behind this movement, and being that they use words like "movement" it's exciting for the youth to jump on board. S.A.F.E (Self-Abuse Finally Ends) has a website; www.selfinjury.com I love their philosophy, you can read about it in the "about us" page. Also their resource page is loaded with good recommendations. Phone 1-800-DONTCUT End Note Warning Against Forums: I don't recommend kids going onto online forums and talking about self-harm in forums. In my experience it only triggers them with the urge to self harm themselves and teaches them to do it better and how to keep it secret longer. That's why I like TWLOHA because they can feel the support of not being alone, while not hearing stories that will give them the desire to self-harm. Having said that there are many forums online for kids to get plugged into. If a kid is going to do this anyway it's important that they plug into a positive forum focused on health and help. www.dailystrength.org is an ok one. It's self policing. There is also www.recoveryourlife.com, which I think is a better website for the positive feel to it. I hope this helps as you walk with youth through this journey of self-harm recovery. Blessings!