Training the F2s

Doctors

I've just delivered some SI Awareness training to an NHS teaching hospital, but instead of my usual audience of trainee doctors, I was in front of 30+ real doctors, or ‘F2’s (whatever that means!).

I don’t feel I performed as well I would have liked, but I know they liked our new Leaflet, as they asked if LifeSIGNS could distribute them within the NHS (which we’ll look into).

I really hope my little talk was of some benefit to them, LifeSIGNS aims to raise awareness about self-injury and the issues surrounding it, and we hope that health care professionals can consider the emotional reasons behind SI.

If your organisation would like to receive training from LifeSIGNS, please have a look at our Training page, and download the Training Brochure and the Training Request Form.

LifeSIGNS has two trainers currently; Sarah and me; and we fully expect to have a third later in the year when we recruit three new Directors, which is very exciting! We’ve had loads of great applications, and we will announce the three new directors during September, isn’t it great that so many people want to be involved with LifeSIGNS and lead us?

I think Sarah delivered some training recently as well, I’m sure she’ll blog about it soon!

Oh it’s the Manchester Meet Up tomorrow, so I’ll be seeing some of you hard-core LifeSIGNS members, woot!

Oh, and we may have some exciting news on Monday, but I haven’t decided if I’m allowed to mention it yet, so I’ll have to see…. dun dun daaahhhh.

An Article on the Elderly, an even more secret affliction?

http://news.scotsman.com/scotland.cfm?id=1147472006

It is nice to finally see an article dedicated to talking about self-injury in people that aren't teenagers or in their twenties. After the repetitiveness of recent statistic laden, young person focused articles in the news, this article feels, finally, like something new.

Of course, self-harm among older people is not new. LifeSIGNS has long been aware that self-injury is not limited to any specific group of people, whether that's old or young, male or female or any other kind of identifying factor. We hope that our website, message board and other services are accessible to those older people as other support available is mostly targeted at the young.

My fear is that at a time when self-injury has become something no longer unknown, when public attention is being drawn to it and the right kinds of questions are being asked, the topic has been swamped with news and issues about the "new teenage epidemic". With all the focus on the findings of the National Inquiry and other studies focusing on younger people, I feel that there is a great risk of pushing the self-harm of older people further into the realm of taboo. I hope that there will be many more articles or follow up work in this area.

Ride On: Poetry by young women with experience of self-injury

Bristol Crisis Service for Women has teamed up with local writer and performer, Claire Williamson, and Bristol based organisation, Poetry Can, to produce a booklet of poetry written for and by young women with experience of self injury.

Free

A limited number of copies are available free to young women (16-25) living in the UK who have experience of self-injury. The booklet can be ordered by sending your name, address and age to:

Ride On
Bristol Crisis Service for Women
PO Box 654
Bristol BS99 1XH

or ringing 0117 9279600 (office hours) or sending a text to 07985 364472 or emailing lorna.bcsw@btconnect.com

The dark, scary, bleakness
That feels like it’ll never end
For look, here
Comes the dawn.

Lisa, Sara, Sarah, Claire, Lorna

Recent Media Interest in self-Injury

Yesterday there were several reports of the following in various newspapers:

http://www.itv.com/news/britain_64db340cd3f25e36518f3c4dd74697d5.html

I am slightly confused as to why these "shocking" statistics have suddenly been revealed. I read the book "By their own Hand" a while back (see my brief review in the Book Review section on the LifeSIGNS site), and have been in contact with the author with my opinions on the research.

While I am of the opinion that any self-injury awareness is usually a good thing, i am getting increasingly frustrated with articles in the media which set out to shock the public, and create moral panics (this frustrates me not just about self-injury I can assure you!) These articles rarely give information which is new, and they rarely give information as to how a person who self-injures can get help for their problems.

We already know that self-injury is a problem. We already know that statistics indicate that it is increasing. We already know the reasons behind self-injury, and that abuse can be a factor involved. Once again the focus on adolescents conveys the message that self-injury only affects younger people. Once again an article which doesn't really serve a useful purpose. If you hadn't guessed, I am being repetitive here because the media coverage of self-injury is getting repetitive.

What we need to be focussing our energies on are the ways in which we can reduce the stigma of self-injury, and how we can help people who self-injure find less harmful ways to cope with their problems. This is what the media coverage on self-injury needs to be about, in my opinion anyway! Feel free to disagree!

An Interesting Article from Bradford


http://www.thisisbradford.co.uk/news/tibnews/display.var.867789.0.selfharmers_will_be_treated_in_surgeries.php

Have a read, what do you think?

The Meet-ups so far!

Having never been to a LifeSIGNS meet-up before, I surprised myself by volunteering to arrange this year’s dates and places. As with anything, one can never find something which will suit everyone, but the two meet-ups so far have been a success, and we still have Manchester to go.

A fairly large group of us met up in London on 12th August, including Wedge, Sarah, Cel and myself. The weather was typical for a British summer, so after not much deliberation we ended up in a pub! In Edinburgh on 19th August 5 LifeSIGNS members and myself met up – the weather was better and we ended up in a park!

It has been fantastic to meet so many LifeSIGNS members in real-life, and it has made the whole LifeSIGNS experience feel more real to me. Meeting Internet friends in real-life is always daunting, but every person I met at the meet-ups is even nicer in real-life! When subsequently asking message-board users how I came across, I was told that I was exactly how they expected. Whether this is because I never stop talking on the board and I don’t shut-up in real-life, or maybe the moose mascot stickers made people realise that I’m moose-mad in real-life too (see the picture at the top!) So I’ll choose to take it as a compliment!

I’m really looking forward to the Manchester meet-up on 2nd September, meeting new people and seeing familiar faces. Sometimes I wish there was more time – when I filled in my questionnaire I said that if LifeSIGNS had £1million, I would like an annual LifeSIGNS weekend retreat. So, we’d better start saving now, or hope for a windfall!

News on treating depression

The latest news on treating depression is that an anaesthetic (ketamine) could potentially be used to treat depression, quickly and effectively (even in those who have resisted other treatments).

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/5253800.stm

At the moment this is still in its initial stages of research. Ketamine as it is now has dangerous side-effects such as hallucinations, and it would not be appropriate to give it to people affected by depression. However, it is something which might be of use in the future. It also sounds like it could be a useful treatment option for people who are acutely depressed or suicidal.

I’m left wondering how this sort of treatment would work for people with long-term depressive illnesses – for instance with the sort of people who are at the moment on anti-depressants for years or even for life.
Or maybe this is just a fleeting idea about the treatment of depression which will be forgotten and replaced with other ideas!

What do people think?

Blogging Competition: Win a Hoodie!

Hola Friendlies,

as you know, we're very proud of our LifeSIGNS website, and our Blog.

We are holding a Blogging Competition until the end of September!

All you have to do is 'comment' on any Articles we post on our Blog from 1st August til end of September.
Have a practice if you like, leave a 'comment' on this Blog entry!

The very best response will earn you a Blogger Hooded Top; those people who respond with thoughtful, well written comments may also be invited to become 'Official LifeSIGNS Bloggers'!

Judging will be very informal, and we're not overly worried by 'good english'.

We're looking for Responses that are insightful, thoughtful, relevant to the original topic, and interesting.

Yes, you can comment on every blog article we post from 1st August, so some of you may choose to comment on several of our blog entries.

You can find our Blog at: www.life-signs.blogspot.com and you can learn how to 'subscribe' to our Blog at: www.selfharm.org/services/rss.html (If you subscribe you will get our Blog automatically, meaning you will always know when we have posted a new blog entry!)

Have fun!

(T&C - the Blogger Top may differ in colour, and is only available in Medium-Large sorry. A Postal Address will be needed from you if you win, so we can send the Sweatshirt to you.)

LifeSIGNS' views on Harm Minimisation

In a bid to get more organisations and individuals with personal experience of self-harm involved in the implementation of harm reduction strategies Louise Pembroke – founder of the National Self-Harm Network – sent out an email asking for views on the topic. Below is the LifeSIGNS response to her request.

Harm minimisation is a positive step towards helping people who self-injure / self-harm in a way that is based on core values of being non-judgemental and respectful. Without condoning self-harm itself, it will help to prevent an individual from causing more damage than is intended and also could help prevent physical difficulties overtaking the emotional issues that were the original problem. By providing information on first aid we can empower people to reduce the severity of later scarring, which may have a psychological impact further down the line, or lead to a need for further medical interventions such as plastic surgery.

LifeSIGNS consider Harm Minimisation and SI Reduction techniques to be a good idea, and essential in an in-patient environment. However, whether or not patients are allowed to have tools for self-injury on their person will depend very much upon the particular situation, and each case must be assessed on an individual basis. It would be hoped that “allowing” patients to injure themselves would only be as a last resort, and the patient would agree to try to use alternate coping mechanisms first. It is also hoped that medical professionals would not have to witness an individual hurting themselves.

We think that organisations such as LifeSIGNS could play a role in educating our members and other visitors to our website on things such as first aid (which we already do, but this could be improved or expanded on perhaps). Signposting could be an effective way of providing information – first aid equipment essentials, basic anatomy, infection information, when you really need to seek help or who you can speak to for further advice.

When this issue was first brought to our attention through the news about the RCN conference, our members were all very much in favour of receiving that information, or some kind of mini first aid kit, when presenting at A&E. Surely such info could also be distributed from GP surgeries and pharmacies or through print outs from various websites?

LifeSIGNS already conducts training for healthcare professionals, including those working with inpatients, and such training appears to work best at destroying preconceived ideas of what self-injury is and how to deal with someone suffering with it. We do not currently discuss harm-minimisation to professionals but I think our training could easily be expanded to include the topic and it already drives home the idea that it is not something that can easily be stopped. It seems that once people gain a greater understanding of what self-injury is and what it is like to self-injure, they are more equipped to develop new ways of dealing with self-injuring patients. LifeSIGNS generally views no-harm contracts between patients and therapists as counterproductive.

In summary, LifeSIGNS:

§ trains professional health care workers;
§ promotes Harm Reduction Techniques / Distraction Techniques;
§ supports the concept of Harm Minimisation;
§ does not condone the use of ‘No Harm’ contracts.

As LifeSIGNS is a growing charity and hopes to be one of the UK’s leading organisations raising awareness and support of self-harm, we would hope that one of our directors or members could be part of any committee working to shape policy on this issue. We can also continue our training of healthcare professionals and others who experience self-harm in their daily lives. We could expand our website and our printed literature to include a more in-depth section on harm-minimisation, or aid in distributing already available literature.

One aspect of harm minimisation that was specifically excluded by Dr Mark Hamilton in his presentation at the National Inquiry conference was that of self-poisoning. While self-poisoning, like other methods of self-injury, can vary greatly in severity (and in some circumstances in intent), there may be room to educate people more on the risks of self-poisoning and enabling them to make safer choices. For example, encouraging people to read the leaflet inside boxes of tablets, or even going so far as to say ibuprofen is going to be marginally safer in overdose than paracetamol or aspirin. For other poisons or substances as well as drugs (legal and illegal), TOXBASE (http://www.spib.axl.co.uk/ ) could be involved – and they already link to LifeSIGNS.

All responses are being collated on http://harm-minimisation.org.uk and the LifeSIGNS response should be up in the next few weeks.

Recruitment: Become a Director of LifeSIGNS

LifeSIGNS is looking to recruit three new directors within the Management Committee! We have recently become a registered charity and are looking forward to expanding the work we currently do and increasing the funding we have that enables us to do that work.

We want people in our management team who are enthusiastic about our goals – that of raising awareness and understanding of self-injury, and providing support to those affected by self-injury – as well as being motivated and pro-active when participating in current projects or coming up with new ideas.

Our business is conducted primarily online, thus it is essential that you are able to check your emails at a minimum of once a week (although preferably every two days) and attend an online meeting once every two months. We also ask that you are able to commit a minimum of 8 to 10 hours of work to LifeSIGNS each month, though naturally any more time than that will be gratefully received. It is important that you communicate with the other directors and the Trustees of LifeSIGNS. Directors form the Management Committee and are accountable to the Trustees.

Some of the areas you may become involved in:

• Creation of a comprehensive and up-to-date directory of local services available to those who are affected by self-injury;
• Fundraising planning and activities;
• Our self-injury awareness strategy group;
• Control and reporting of our finances;
• Training and education.

The posts are open to anyone and are not limited to the UK. Many of our directors and volunteers have direct experience of self-injury and we have strategies in place to provide space when daily stresses and strains are taking their toll. However, if you are struggling with problems at the moment we would suggest that you consider delaying your application for the time being.

The real-life meet-ups in London, Manchester and Edinburgh provide us with an excellent opportunity for us to meet you and discuss your future involvement in LifeSIGNS. If you are unable to make one of the three dates, we would like to at least be able to have a telephone conversation with you.

Please indicate on the application form if you would like to be called upon as a volunteer in our activities, in the event your application to be a director is unsuccessful. Much of our work can be greatly advanced by people willing to help us in various ways and you do not need to be a director to do so. This is especially the case if you are currently struggling with mental difficulties, as you can help as and when you feel you can without feeling under pressure to do LifeSIGNS work!


The successful applicants will have an initial 3-month trial to see how things go, and if being a director is the right thing for them at this time. While a directorship is a voluntary post, it is important for the whole of LifeSIGNS that the people chosen are enthusiastic and committed to the charity!

You must request an Application Form from Sarah@lifesigns.org.uk

The closing date for submission of applications is 31st August 2006. Please send your completed form to Sarah@lifesigns.org.uk