the user-led self-injury organisation.

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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.

#SIAD 1st March

#selfinjury #selfharm

Use the #SIAD hashtag across your social networks. Beware when browsing though, in case spammers post nasty stuff.

Find us on all the networks.

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:

  1. Right-click with your mouse and ‘Save image’.
  2. 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?

Awareness orange ribbon circle. Self love not self injury.

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.

 

Quick SIAD list

  1. Subscribe to our newsletter – it’s vital we get organised! Standby for recruitment info.
  2. Follow LifeSIGNS on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram (and LinkedIn if you’re a health care pro of any kind).
  3. Download your fave images from the choice of 54, above. Share across social and into groups.
  4. Download our fact sheets.
  5. Share our pages and blog articles across social.
  6. Write for us! Contribute a blog article to express your experience, or work with us to create a reference page.
  7. Donate a quid or two each month. We are rebuilding our organisation and need your help.

Contact LifeSIGNS

This year (2023) we don’t want to talk with the media – our members and supporters can do the talking.
 
If you must contact us, please email hello@lifesigns.org.uk
 
We especially welcome blog article submissions :)
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Organisation Announcements
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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.

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We’ve been talking about self-injury since 2002

 

 

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