Det är svårt att ta hand om någon som man inte tycker om. En kvalitativ studie om självomhändertagande hos personer med självskadebeteende

Sammanfattning: Research has found that psychiatric patients with deliberate self-harm are less able to self-care. Self-care in a clinical context is a relatively new and under-researched topic. Previous studies have not explored how people who self-injure experience self-care. In order to investigate how people who self-injure and receive specialist psychiatric care experience self-care, and what it means for them, an explorative qualitative study with a critical realistic epistemology was used. Two research questions were formulated: (1) How do people who self-harm and receive specialized psychiatric care describe their experiences of self-care? (2) How do people who self-harm and receive specialized psychiatric care describe their experiences of self-care in relation to self-harm? Fourteen participants, who all had deliberately self-injured in the past year, were recruited from a specialized psychiatric hospital. The participants were interviewed using a semi-structured interview. The material was transcribed and analyzed using reflective thematic analysis. Three main themes and ten sub-themes were identified. The results show that self-care includes many aspects: basic activities in everyday life, attitude towards self and help-seeking behaviors. Further, the results suggest a complex relationship between self-care and deliberate self-harm. Future research could further explore the relationship between attitude towards self, self-care, and self-harm and investigate what an intervention for self-care for this population could entail. Based on our findings, we recommend that clinicians include a broader view of self-care than what is included in current standard assessments.