Working With Clients Who Self-Injure: Providing Alternatives

✍ Scribed by Kelly L. Wester; Heather C. Trepal

• Publisher: American Counseling Association
• Year: 2005
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 77 KB
• Volume: 8
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 1099-0399
• DOI: 10.1002/j.2161-1882.2005.tb00085.x

✦ Synopsis

The topic of self-injurious behavior (SIB) has been gaining widespread attention. Although college counselors engage in various types of treatments in order to uncover the underlying reasons for a client's SIB, there is another step in treatment that might be helpful to clients who self-injure. This step involves alternatives to self-injury. The authors provide various alternatives to self-injury and discuss matching the alternative to the function and type of SIB.

T he topic of self-injurious behavior (SIB) has been gaining widespread attention in the mainstream culture (Favazza, 1998) and professional literature (Zila & Kiselica, 2001). SIBs have been defined as "all behaviors involving the deliberate infliction of direct physical harm to one's own body without the intent to die as a consequence of the behavior" (Simeon & Favazza, 2001, p. 1). Thus, SIB encompasses a wide range of behaviors, from skin picking, hair pulling, and cutting and burning to bone breaking and selfsurgery (Favazza, 1987;Simeon & Favazza, 2001). Although the most severe cases of SIB can result in unexpected and unintentional death, SIB is not a suicide attempt. When an individual self-injures, there is no intent to die (Al-