Making Sense of Self-harm

Author(s):  
Peter Steggals
Keyword(s):  
2016 ◽  
Vol 27 (2) ◽  
pp. 215-225 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nicholas D. Hughes ◽  
Louise Locock ◽  
Sue Simkin ◽  
Anne Stewart ◽  
Anne E. Ferrey ◽  
...  

Self-harm is common in young people, and can have profound effects on parents and other family members. We conducted narrative interviews with 41 parents and other family members of 38 young people, aged up to 25, who had self-harmed. Most of the participants were parents but included one sibling and one spouse. This article reports experiences of the parent participants. A cross-case thematic analysis showed that most participants were bewildered by self-harm. The disruption to their worldview brought about by self-harm prompted many to undergo a process of “sense-making”—by ruminative introspection, looking for information, and building a new way of seeing—to understand and come to terms with self-harm. Most participants appeared to have been successful in making sense of self-harm, though not without considerable effort and emotional struggle. Our findings provide grounds for a deeper socio-cultural understanding of the impact of self-harm on parents.


Author(s):  
Steve Ferzacca

Making noise in a basement corner of an ageing mall in Singapore affords a small community of musicians, family and friends a gathering place to meet, eat, drink, smoke and jam loud amplified music. The Doghouse is a ‘device of saturation’, a way of making sense of self and others: it exists so that this sonic community can exact possibilities and creative potential within the limits of official use of public space. Bodily scales are realized in cosmopolitan spaces where local and global interrogations in dialogue, in space, and among things, make trouble and meaning. And so some noisy people have, for now, found a playground where their urban dreams and aspirations are imagined and realized.


2019 ◽  
Vol 37 (2) ◽  
pp. 141-150
Author(s):  
Allison Echard

Abstract Told through my experiences of working with three teenagers who had mild and moderate developmental disabilities, this autoethnographic study considers identity formation as a core concept in music therapy clinical practice. In doing so, I explored theories of identity formation, including those described by Erikson (1950, Childhood and society, Norton), Marcia and colleagues (1993, Ego identity: A handbook for psychosocial research, Springer), and Crocetti, Rubini, and Meeus (2008, Journal of Adolescence, 31(2), 207–222), relating these concepts to each of the teenagers I worked with. This article, therefore, chronicles the ways in which my clinical thinking shifted from a skills-based approach to one that considers the client’s identity as a whole, leading to suggestions of ways to integrate identity formation theory into clinical practice.


1986 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 21-38 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hussein M.A. Alawi

2018 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 201-227
Author(s):  
Milla Ojala ◽  
Seija Karppinen ◽  
Erja Syrjäläinen

Author(s):  
Lars-Christer Hydén

This chapter provides information on the social and cultural background of dementia from the early twentieth century into the early twenty-first century. The chapter presents an overview of the discussions about dementia, self, and identity, with a particular emphasis on research on narrative and dementia. The ideas around identity in dementia, from Kitwood to Sabat and Kontos, are discussed, together with research on storytelling in dementia. A general conclusion from this chapter is that although persons with dementia over time will become increasingly challenged as storytellers, they are still active meaning-makers. They are obviously still engaged in the never-ending activity of making sense of their social as well as physical world—events in the world, as well as what people are saying and doing. Telling stories is central to this endeavor, which entails “world-making” as well as “self-making” through constructing, presenting, and negotiating a sense of self and identity.


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