You do not currently have permission to view the full text for this document. Please sign in to an account with an active subscription or contact support.
Steven Walker, Jessica Kingsley Publishers, 2012, 144 pp., (paperback)
Responding to and working with young people and children who self-harm is challenging and anxiety provoking, often causing us to feel deskilled. This then is an important area and I began reading this book with interest. It has easy to navigate and has logically sequenced chapters on understanding self-harm, recognition and treatment, early intervention and prevention and supporting a self-harming child. There are interesting appendices on government strategy and on the management of self-harm in primary and secondary care. There is also a list of useful resources and organisations.
The author makes explicit that the book is aimed at nurses, social workers, youth workers and teachers and would be a good reference for any primary mental health worker. I am sure it would be very useful to this group. He aspires to provide a foundation of theoretical ideas and practical guidance for a professional audience and the book is indeed brief, readable and user friendly. However, I did not think it would be particularly useful for psychotherapists other than those who are very inexperienced or who feel out of their depth with this group of patients or service users.
In terms of content, there were some really useful sections and some that I found lacking in evidence and depth. The section on understanding self-harm includes some discussion of what self-harm is and who is likely to engage in it. It also highlights the risk to socially excluded groups. There is then a rather too brief section on models: biological, psychological, environmental factors, etc. which unfortunately does not discuss any of the evidence for the models. Following this there was what I thought was a useful highlighting of some of the myths about self-harm: ‘it's for attention’, ‘it doesn't hurt’ and so on.
In the next chapter, ‘Recognising and treating self-harm’, there is acknowledgement of the minimal training that most professionals ha