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A preliminary investigation into counselling student attitudes towards self‐harming behaviour
Author(s) -
Fox Claudine
Publication year - 2016
Publication title -
counselling and psychotherapy research
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.38
H-Index - 32
eISSN - 1746-1405
pISSN - 1473-3145
DOI - 10.1002/capr.12063
Subject(s) - harm , psychology , exploratory research , clinical psychology , deliberate self harm , stigma (botany) , social psychology , medicine , suicide prevention , psychiatry , poison control , medical emergency , sociology , anthropology
Aim This article reports an exploratory study that investigated the attitudes of counselling students towards self‐harm. Method A total of 76 counselling students were presented with short scenarios describing an individual who engaged in self‐cutting, self‐poisoning and unspecified self‐harm. Attitudes were measured using the Attitudes towards Mental Illness Questionnaire ( AMIQ ; L uty et al., 2006). Results Overall, counselling students demonstrated a positive response to self‐harm. Significant differences in attitude according to type of self‐harm were also evident. Participants were significantly less positive towards self‐poisoning than self‐cutting or unspecified self‐harm. Attitudes towards self‐cutting and unspecified self‐harm were not differentiated. Conclusions Findings suggest counselling student attitudes towards self‐harm are worthy of further investigation. Potential implications for counselling training, professional practice and stigma reduction are discussed.