ABSTRACT
As a mental health professional, there are many things we see each day. Imagine any of the following:
■ Sitting in your counseling offi ce and having a parent telling you in a shaky, fearful voice that her daughter is engaging in “cutting,” and she doesn’t know what to do
■ Walking into a home visit, you see one of the youth in short sleeves with many burn marks up and down his arm
■ Receiving a late-night phone call from a parent because her son is in the emergency room with cuts up and down his arms and she is fearful that he attempted suicide
■ A youth coming into your offi ce to inform you that her friend is harming herself and she is unsure what to do
advisor, and in her appointment with you she pleads that she was not trying to kill herself but instead was just engaging in self-injury-something she always does
Any of these cases, or others, may have happened to you. You may have been aware of what to do, next steps, questions to ask, and treatment to implement. However, at times discerning what these cuts or marks are, distinguishing between non-suicidal self-injury and suicide, as well as understanding how to respond to parents, administrators, or friends can be confusing. Discussing non-suicidal
self-injury (NSSI) can be puzzling and tricky. One of the many reasons for this is that NSSI has been referred to by a variety of different names, has multiple different assessment measures, and tends to be referred to alongside or in combination with other self-harm behaviors such as eating disorders, substance abuse, and suicide. Therefore, with all of these nuances in defi nitions and assessments, it makes the comparison and exploration of prevalence rates diffi cult. In this chapter, we will begin to pick apart the idea of NSSI through exploring the usage of names and titles, as well as defi nitions, leading up to a discussion of prevalence rates and how NSSI plays out in various populations and demographics.
