Self-harming

In this section...

Key people

Safeguarding Officer
Mrs Shona Christey

Designated Safeguarding Lead (DSL)
Mr Jason Christey

Deputy DSLs
Mrs Shona Christey
Mrs Julie Clayton
Mr David Lomas

Self-harming: advice and support for parents

If you have a Safeguarding concern about a pupil's health, welfare or safety, you must raise it with a member of staff.

The phrase ‘self-harm’ is used to describe a wide range of behaviours. Self-harm is often understood to be a physical response to an emotional pain of some kind, and can be very addictive. Some of the things people do are quite well known, such as cutting, burning or pinching, but there are many, many ways to hurt yourself, including abusing drugs and alcohol or having an eating disorder. Sometimes, it’s more important to focus on how someone is feeling rather than what they do to themselves. Quite often, people find that more helpful.

Everyone has accidents from time to time resulting in cuts and bruises - but it's the injuries that are caused on purpose that are considered to be acts of self-harm. Self-harm often happens during times of anger, distress, fear, worry, depression or low self-esteem in order to manage or control negative feelings. Self-harm can also be used as a form of self-punishment for something someone has done, thinks they have done, are told by someone else that they have done, or that they have allowed to be done to themselves.

It's almost impossible to say how many young people are self-harming. This is because very few teenagers tell anyone what's going on, so it's incredibly difficult to keep records or have an accurate idea of scale. It is thought that around 13% of young people may try to hurt themselves on purpose at some point between the ages of 11 and 16, but the actual figure could be much higher.

Information provided by Alumina by Youthscape (formerly SelfHarmUK)