Making Sense of an Unknown Terrain: How Parents Understand Self-Harm in Young People

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.

Source: Qualitative Health Research - December 11, 2016 Category: Global & Universal Authors: Hughes, N. D., Locock, L., Simkin, S., Stewart, A., Ferrey, A. E., Gunnell, D., Kapur, N., Hawton, K. Tags: Violence Source Type: research