Penumbra ralses self-harm awareness

Leading mental health charity, Penumbra, last week hosted a special event to mark self-harm awareness day.

Penumbra is a leading mental health charity providing a range of support services across Scotland to around 1800 people each week. Penumbra works with partners across 18 local authority areas to provide innovative mental health support in a community setting.

Our compassionate and highly skilled recovery teams work with the people we support to create tailored and person focussed strategies that give practical steps towards recovery. Using our I.ROC wellbeing toolkit, our ‘whole person’ approach is based on the rights of the people we support through choice, dignity and the expectation of recovery.

Penumbra is an Alliance partner of Future Pathways, which arranges support for people who experienced abuse or neglect while in care as children.

The charity’s Edinburgh service has operated the a Self-Harm Project since 2005. It currently provides:

• 1:1 Therapeutic support sessions to enable people who self harm or with suicidal ideation to cope with crisis and trauma by exploring their emotions and concerns in a confidential setting. Support is provided by multi-disciplinary team including therapists and specialist peer workers.
• Information, advice and support for parents, carers, family and friends who are affected by, concerned about and informally supporting people who self harm.
• Skin Camouflage Service to help people affected by scarring gain confidence by using specialist camouflage products and techniques, building confidence
• Facilitated Group Workshops (community or other location based) for those who are in contact with people who self harm.
• Training Sessions for professionals and those who support people who self harm.
• Awareness Raising Sessions for professionals and those who support people who self harm.
• Training Day for organisations.

Assistant Service Manager for the self-harm project, Samantha Harrison, commented: “The Edinburgh Self Harm Project works with people who are at risk of suicide and self-harm, and we provide a safe and non-judgemental environment where people can explore their issues about self-harm in confidence.

“We’re often the first opportunity people have had to talk about these issues in a compassionate and sensitive setting.

“Self-harm is a complex issue so everything we do is person centred and we very much see our project as a user-led where we take a holistic approach in looking at all aspects of someone’s life, rather than just focussing on injuries. What’s really beneficial to us as a team is that some of our colleagues are employed as Peer Workers who are able to use their lived experience to support people through recovery.

Support Manager for the self-harm project, Ran Majumder, added: “We were delighted that Sunday’s event was a great success with no empty seats and we want people to continue the conversation about self-harm long after it.

“We hope the event helped to shine a spotlight on self-harm, by providing a forum where members of the public and professionals alike were able to gain invaluable insight into the issues surrounding self-harm from our team.”