National Self-Injury Awareness Day March 1, 2002

Approximately 1% of the United States population uses physical self-injury as a way of dealing with overwhelming feelings or situations, often using it to speak when no words will come. Despite the fact that self-injury is far from rare, myths and misunderstanding surround this psychological ailment -- mistaken ideas that often result in self-harmers being treated badly by police, doctors, therapists, and emergency room personnel.

In response to society's mistaken ideas about self-harm, the American Self-Harm Information Clearinghouse was created to educate and inform medical and mental health professionals, the media, and the general public, sorting myth from fact and explaining what is known about self-harm. One of ASHIC's major projects is National Self-Injury Awareness Day. In this grassroots effort, people across the country and the world whose lives have been affected by self-injury deliver fact sheets, reports, and brochures to those who make decisions about the treatment of those who self-harm.

Sign up to help

How to Participate

NSIAD 2002 Documents home page

Materials for participants are made available for download here in Portable Document Format. PDF files can be used on almost any platform (Windows, Mac, various flavors of UNIX) once you download the free Acrobat Reader. This format is preferred, because the files are smaller and the documents will look the same for everyone. If you require a customizable version of any document, please contact me to arrange it.

We can't remain silent any longer.

Deb Martinson
ASHIC Chair
administrator, bodies-under-siege mailing list
author, secret shame (self-injury information and support)