26 August 2021
Researchers:
Amy Chandler and Annie Taylor
Key findings
- Separation of mental health and alcohol services: Despite participants describing drinking and self-harm as related and often as deeply intertwined, the services they described did not often enable drinking and self-harm to be considered together. Many participants suggested they hid either their drinking or their self-harm in order to access services.
- A lack of needs-based services provision: Participants described services which were diagnosis-led, which meant that many had been unable to access the services they wanted or needed, with long waiting lists to access any support. With both self-harm and alcohol use, this led to some people ‘falling between the cracks’ – with no ‘treatable’ diagnosis, left with limited or no support, despite experiencing significant distress and seeking help for this.
- Services not flexible or not accessible: Related to the above, participants described services that were either absent or structured in a way that made them inaccessible.
- Being dismissed: Many participants described feeling dismissed when they tried to access services about their self-harm. This is potentially dangerous as it could lead to people feeling they need to self-harm more frequently or ‘seriously’ in order to access support.
- Harmful or cruel treatment: In addition to the systematic problems with services, many participants described cruel and painful treatment and harmful attitudes from practitioners, including being given stitches without anaesthetic, being told their problems were ‘invented’, being told their scars would make them ‘ugly’, and not being believed when they were seeking treatment for medical problems other than self-harm.
