ABSTRACT
Imagine that you are a recently qualified mental health nurse, working on an acute mental health admissions
unit, based in the grounds of the local district general hospital, which provides an out-of-hours assessment service for people following a self-harm attempt. As you become more experienced, you will eventually be asked to go across and assess someone following a deliberate self-harm attempt. Knowing that you will be faced with this very real problem you decide to do some preparation in learning how best to treat someone, to prevent reoccurrence or repetition of self-harm. The responsibility lies with you to provide a thorough assessment, a plan of treatment and to deliver and evaluate that care. You vaguely remember from a lecture as a student that the use of a cognitive-behavioural approach was effective in reducing repetition in attempts at self-harm, so you look in your notes from your lecture and take out the book that was recommended reading.2 The relevant chapter recommends using cognitive-behavioural therapy as a means to prevent repetition.
