Using photo-elicitation to understand reasons for repeated self-harm: a qualitative study

Edmondson, AJ ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0224-1997, Brennan, C and House, AO, 2018. Using photo-elicitation to understand reasons for repeated self-harm: a qualitative study. BMC Psychiatry, 18 (1): 98.

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Abstract

Background: Reasons for self-harm are not well understood. One of the reasons for this is that first-hand accounts are usually elicited using traditional interview and questionnaire methods. This study aims to explore the acceptability of using an approach (photo-elicitation) that does not rely on solely verbal or written techniques, and to make a preliminary assessment of whether people can usefully employ images to support a discussion about the reasons why they self-harm.

Method: Interviews with eight participants using photo elicitation, a method in which photographs produced by the participant are used as a stimulus and guide within the interview.

Results: Participants responded positively to using images to support a discussion about their self-harm and readily incorporated images in the interview. Four main themes were identified representing negative and positive or adaptive purposes of self-harm: self-harm as a response to distress, self-harm to achieve mastery, self-harm as protective and self-harm as a language or form of communication.

Conclusions: Employing this novel approach was useful in broadening our understanding of self-harm.

Item Type:	Journal article
Publication Title:	BMC Psychiatry
Creators:	Edmondson, A.J., Brennan, C. and House, A.O.
Publisher:	Springer
Date:	2018
Volume:	18
Number:	1
Identifiers:	Number Type 10.1186/s12888-018-1681-3 DOI 1322379 Other
Rights:	© The Author(s). 2018. Open Access. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated.
Divisions:	Schools > School of Social Sciences
Record created by:	Linda Sullivan
Date Added:	10 Jun 2020 08:39
Last Modified:	22 Jun 2020 14:08
URI:	https://irep.ntu.ac.uk/id/eprint/39961

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