No Secrets
Supporting those affected by self-injury
Self-injury awareness:
• No Secrets – history and progress
• Self-injury (inc. NICE guidance)
• My personal story (Kerri Jones)
WARM UP
Exercise 1
Why No Secrets started...
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Co-founded Oct 2007 – 2 volunteers
Lack of support
‘Alone’ – me and family
Lack of understanding
Nobody spoke about it
“No Secrets” – how we want it
Our Mission
• To provide a safe and supportive environment for
anybody affected by self-injury
• To raise awareness of self-injury
• To tackle stigma associated with self-injury
We aim to achieve the above by providing peer
support, providing awareness-level training,
running awareness campaigns, communicating
with as many as possible and working closely
with local health services.
Since October 2007...
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Group 1 St Helens continuing to run
Group 2 Wigan started early 2011
Group 3 Halton launched May 2011
Group 4 Family/friend support – 20th July @ PB
Continual awareness level training to over 200
people
• Local press, Saints (RLFC), ‘Pick Me Up’, BBC News
• Now have 10 volunteers
• Successful activities/fundraisers
Sponsored Abseil – St Helens
Sponsored mountain climb
Donut men – Wigan group 2011
No Secrets in one sentence...
• “A feeling of belonging and that I’m not alone”
• “Means I can make a difference to other people’s
lives”
• “Support and guidance, and friends when you
need it most”
• “People understand self-harm, and me”
• “No Secrets is a fantastic place to open up and
meet new friends”
• “A safe place just to ‘be’”
• “I belong!”
• “People committed to improving lives”
No Secrets in one word...
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“Friendly”
“Helpful”
“Reliable”
“Super”
“Hope”
From Wigan & St
Helens group
members in, April
2011
“Happy”
“Inspirational”
“Accepted”
“Friendship”
“Peace”
Self-injury
Definition adopted by NICE:
“intentional self-poisoning or injury, irrespective
of the apparent purpose of the act”.
Not always connected to suicide. Majority
preventing suicide.
2 categories: Self-injury and self-poisoning.
Self-injury/self-poisoning
• SI - Cutting, swallowing objects, insertion of
foreign objects into body, burning, stabbing.
• SP – overdosing with medicines, swallowing
poisonous substance.
• Self-injury more common than self-poisoning,
this is not reflected in statistics.
• People who self-poison are more likely to seek
professional help.
NICE: Clinical need for guidance
• 150,000 presentations to A&E each year
• UK rates are amongst highest in Europe
• Half of the 4000 people who die each year by
suicide will have self harmed at some point
• Self-poisoning most commonly seen in ED’s
• Cutting most common form of SI
• 100x more likely than general population to die
by suicide, whether intentional or accidental
Information from Clinical guideline 16
NICE: Key priorities for
implementation
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Respect, understanding and choice
Staff training
Activated charcoal
Triage
Treatment
Assessment of needs and risk
Psychological, psychosocial and
pharmacological interventions
Information from Clinical guideline 16
Risk factors & life events
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Single
Divorced
Live alone
Single parent
Severe lack social support
Disadvantaged background
Victimisation (domestic abuse, sexual abuse etc)
Alcohol/drug use
Information from Clinical guideline 16
Psychological characteristics
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Certain characteristics more common in SH:
Impulsivity
Hopelessness
Poor problem solving
• Nearly ½ those presenting to ED’s with SI meet
criteria for having a PD (though this can bring
it’s own problems)
How many self-inflicted injuries did
Warrington A&E treat within the space
of 9 months (1st April- 31st Dec) in 2010
What percentage of that 802 were
male?
What was the average age of all 802
people who presented to Warrington
A&E?
WHY DO WE SELF HARM?
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Relieves tension
Punishment
Calming/self soothing
Focus shifts from emotional to physical
Control
Adrenaline rush
Numbness/detached - “It makes me feel alive”
Anger and self-hatred
Depression “jeckle and hyde effect”
Very upset
Problems can seem smaller afterwards
Anxiety
IF ONLY YOU COULD GET IT!
• Self harm makes me feel something when I feel
numb
• I don’t do it for attention
• I’m hurting myself, nobody else
• It’s mostly easier not to tell anyone I’ve done it
• A bigger wound doesn’t mean worse feelings
• We can have accidents too
It helped when…
• The professionals working with me weren’t scared
of talking about self harm.
• My support worker expressed they wanted to
understand as much as possible
• Somebody accepted that self-injury is my way of
coping for the time being
• I was told to be ‘safe’ rather than told not to do it
• People truly believed I didn’t want to keep hurting
myself, even though it didn’t come across that way
• I was offered support after telling somebody about
my self harm, rather than being told I was seeking
attention and being manipulative.
It really didn’t help me when:
• People said I was being stupid or I should have
known better
• Staff got annoyed with me after I’d harmed, for
not talking about it before I did it
• A&E staff refused me pain relief
• Someone took all my sharps away (where no
suicidal intent present)
• I heard people laughing at me
• Staff said they were disappointed in me
• I was reminded of those who I love and told how
much I was letting them down
• People made a big deal of it when they didn’t
need to
In summary
DO
DON’T
Talk about SH and ask if you are
unsure
Ridicule/put me down
Understand as much as possible and
reflect on your actions
Blurt out responses
Accept
Treat differently from everyone else
Be Safe
Remove my only coping mechanism
Believe & encourage
Laugh/make fun of
Non-judgmental support
Focus on negatives of SH
Generally, focusing solely on negatives to self-injury will make person feel
worse. Try to explore a variety of potential positives and negatives (Sharon)
My story
• Abused in early childhood
• Uni, deaths (april – Aug), cutting and suicide
attempts 2005-2006 - SIPU
• 2007 Started voluntary work and co-founded
No Secrets with mum
• Extent of abuse accidentally revealed to family
• Reported abuse to police
• Self-injury – as long as remember. My release
from overwhelming feelings of sadness, selfhatred and anger.
What I’ve learned since initial
breakdown
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Honesty is vital
Acceptance important
Actively work on tackling problems
Help others with similar issues
I’m not alone
I’ve achieved more than I thought capable
Anchors – family, friends, pets
Open Q&A
• This is your chance to ask any questions around
self-injury and/or mental health problems
• We will always be honest and do not worry that
any questions will act as a trigger
• We want you to be honest
• Bring up anything you may want to discuss within
the group
• Your questions help us to see how it is from your
perspectives
Feedback and check out
• Share with the group what you have learned
from this session
• It’s important that we remember that
anybody can be affected by self-injury. If you
have been affected by this session try to speak
to somebody before you leave
• Check-out... What are you going to do this
evening?
Evaluation
• We would be grateful if you could complete
the evaluation form for us to feedback your
own thoughts on how this session went
• This will help us to improve and continue the
work we are doing
Thanks!
More details can be found on our website:
http://nosecrets.moonfruit.com
For more information on the WIGAN group, contact
Kerri on 07846 889 300 or email
kerri86@gmail.com
For more information on the ST HELENS or HALTON
groups contact Tina on
07863 736 647
or email tina.sthelens@gmail.com
Thank you for your support!