Individens upplevelse av att leva med självskadande beteende : En retrospektiv litteraturstudie

Sammanfattning: Self-harm is common among young people in Sweden. Therefore people who work with these young people need to have knowledge about self-harm to be able to provide the right help. The aim of this study was to investigate how the individual experience self-harm, and how this could be understood. The empirical material has been based on consisted of 28 life stories. 24 of them were written by women and 4 by men. These stories were processed by a qualitative content analysis. The results showed that most of the individuals who self-harm experiences that they hate and criticize themselves, and they also feel different from others. Their destructive behavior becomes a part of themselves which results in that they can identify themselves as people who self-harm. Most of the individuals identify themselves both as sick and healthy. The results also shows that the individuals experiences a feeling of no one understanding them and that they have difficulties to identify themselves with others, which can result in isolation and searching for others who self-harm. The majority of the individuals hides their behavior because they feel ashamed, scared or want to protect their environment. To hide the behavior they play roles or keep up a front. The environments reaction to people who self-harm is fear, disgust or misunderstanding.