Self-Injury Awareness Day is on the 1st of March every year, as it has been for for well over twenty years.
SIAD is an international event that is recognised across the globe.
LifeSIGNS is proud to have supported Self-Injury Awareness Day since we launched in 2002, and we’re the number one resource for SIAD material.
Raising awareness about self-injury is incredibly important. Awareness leads to understanding and empathy, banishing judgment and fear, and reducing the number of people who feel alone and suffer in silence.
Raising awareness is about educating people who do not self-injure, and reaching out to people who do.
Self-Injury Action Day
Maybe we need to go beyond awareness and take action against injustice and ignorance, acting to improve the processes of our healthcare services and the empathy of our friends and family.
2023
This year, we have six messages and nine photo variants! So pick n choose, mix n match!
Save and share SIAD graphics
Two ways to save an image:
- Right-click with your mouse and ‘Save image’.
- Long-press on your phone.
Don’t do a screenshot – that’ll make the image smaller and lower quality.
The images are bigger than shown below; follow the instructions to get the full-size graphics.
Please save the graphics above and share on your networks and into groups. Save your fave images to your phone or computer to get the full-size file.
Self-injury and self-harm
"Self-injury is a coping mechanism. An individual harms their physical self to deal with emotional pain, or to break feelings of numbness by arousing sensation."
It’s about coping. The harmful actions, the differences between self-injury and self-harm, are not as important as recognising that the person is in distress, and trying to cope.
There doesn’t have to be mental illness involved for mental and emotional stress to drive a person to hurt themselves – to seek relief and release from the distress.
Anyone at any age
It’s not a teen thing, it’s not a girl thing. People from any background or any age might turn to self-injury as a way to cope with overwhelming emotions. Read more about male SI, autism and SI, and a trans man’s experience.
Some adults discover self-injury in later life, while others return to it after many years.
Myths and harmful tropes
When you’re all alone with your self-injury, with nobody to talk to, it can be easy to believe what people say about you. Bullies use stereotypes to make you feel worse about yourself.
Read the myths – what would you add?
What you can do
LifeSIGNS can provide the resources and support, but we alone cannot fight stigma and educate everyone – we need your help. If you want people to understand self-injury better, then you need to do something, and we’re very happy to help you.
This year, we’d like to ask every single one of you to choose at least one action from the following list, and do it not only for SIAD, but for yourself. If you’d prefer to live in a world where people understand self-injury and don’t judge, where you can talk freely about mental health instead of being trapped in silence, then it’s our shared responsibility to educate our friends, family members, and healthcare providers. We’ll provide the resources, and we’d like you to do your bit by using those resources now.
Self-Injury Awareness Day can be an Action Day🎗️ – we ask all education and health care providers to review processes, service arrangements, training, and *attitudes*.
— LifeSIGNS (@LifeSIGNS) March 1, 2023
Smash (si)lence, smash stigma: https://t.co/7hb5Ww0WrJ#SIAD #SelfInjury #SelfInjuryAwareness #SHAD pic.twitter.com/YZxHgqVNqH
Quick SIAD list
- Subscribe to our newsletter – it’s vital we get organised! Standby for recruitment info.
- Follow LifeSIGNS on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram (and LinkedIn if you’re a health care pro of any kind).
- Download your fave images from the choice of 54, above. Share across social and into groups.
- Download our fact sheets.
- Share our pages and blog articles across social.
- Write for us! Contribute a blog article to express your experience, or work with us to create a reference page.
- Donate a quid or two each month. We are rebuilding our organisation and need your help.
Contact LifeSIGNS
Please donate each month via PayPal
We’re asking for a little bit, every month – to help us reinvigorate our approach to self-injury awareness and support.
Autism, emotions, and self-injury
Jay talks about his self-discovery journey from frustration to identity.
I wear many hats – nursing, teaching, self-injury
Leah talks about her teaching, nursing, and self-injury.
SIAD Self-Injury Action Day
Self-Injury Awareness Day has been going for decades. Maybe it’s time it became Self-Injury *Action* Day.
The next 21 years
LifeSIGNS is back, or at least we will be once we’ve recruited a new management team and redeveloped our approach to awareness and support.
We’ve been talking about self-injury since 2002
- Our founder wrote this Huffington Post article about his self-injury and… Self-Injury Awareness Day is not enough
- Our members helped write this Huffington Post list: 11 things people Who self-harm want you to know
- We were featured in the Huffington Post: Charities reveal gulf of understanding between parents and children who self-injure
- LifeSIGNS was in the Guardian newspaper: “Self-injury blights many students’ lives“.
20 Comments
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Unwanted Life
March 29, 2021I didn’t know this day existed, but I’ll be ready for it for next year
Peiton
August 12, 2020Our school is currently looking for future fundraising and awareness ideas, and as somebody who has struggled with self-harm/injury, and knowing multiple people who have experienced it, I think this is definitely a good idea for our school. Even though I have overcome self-harm/injury (at least for now), I still believe that this is an important issue and I really appreciate what you all do, because seeing all of this support has really helped me in my journey to overcoming it. So thank you, for helping not just me but many others all around the world <3
Jack
April 18, 2019As a previous and current sufferer of depression and self-harm, self-harm has been a pretty big deal for me, especially if people make jokes about it as they have no idea of what that person is going through. Thank you for doing this every single year. I’ll be making sure to wear something orange next year
Laura
March 1, 2017I don’t have an orange wristband so I took orange strings to school an shared it with most of my classmates. Everybody thought it is an amazing idea. I’ll do it next year too.
Bread
February 27, 2017Wrote a post on my blog – http://scruffy-duck.net/seven-things-siad/
Jacey Gregory
January 31, 2017Me and my friend are doing an assembly about it in our high school to raise awareness as we feel it is not talked about much in schools.
Wedge
March 2, 2015Kay, you can’t help others if you’re risking your own health – you could send yourself over the edge and then you wouldn’t be able to help anyone for ages. It’s better to focus on proper self-care first so that you can support others in a sustainable manner.
Like they say on airplanes, “put on your own air mask before helping others with theirs”.
But glad you’re feeling good.
kay
March 1, 2015I am participating. And I really feel good about it, just to know that others are doing the same thing I’m doing and going through hard times makes me really feel bad and all I want to do is help.
Wedge
March 1, 2015Kitty, Christina – good stuff. Courageous. Best wishes for the year ahead to you.
Christina
March 1, 2015I wrote my story, I shared it with friends and now they are sharing it on their facebook pages.
Kitty
February 26, 2015I told my principal at school today and she said that she will make an announcement about it