ArticleSociology of health & illness2020
The social life of self-injury: exploring the communicative dimension of a very personal practice.
Article in Sociology of health & illness, 2020. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 10 papers.
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Who cites it
10 citing papers in PubMed.
- Critically Exploring Self-Harm Through Lived Experience Perspectives: A Survivor-Controlled Integrative Review Employing Participatory Methodology.Health expectations : an international journal of public participation in health care and health policy · 2026Review
- Enacted Restoration of Selfhood: A Kierkegaardian Perspective on Self-harm Among People with Mental Illness.Culture, medicine and psychiatry · 2026Article
- Clinical and Psychosocial Stress Correlates of Self-Harm in Women: A Retrospective Cohort Study in the Forensic Mental Health Setting.Stress and health : journal of the International Society for the Investigation of Stress · 2025Article
- Nonsuicidal self-injury and intersubjective recognition: 'You can't argue with wounds'.The Sociological review · 2024Article
- "Am I really alive?": Understanding the role of homophobia, biphobia and transphobia in young LGBT+ people's suicidal distress.Social science & medicine (1982) · 2022Article
- "How deep do I have to cut?": Non-suicidal self-injury and imagined communities of practice on Tumblr.Social science & medicine (1982) · 2022Article
- The Violence of the Cut: Gendering Self-Harm.International journal of environmental research and public health · 2021Article
- The quest for genuine care: A qualitative study of the experiences of young people who self-harm in residential care.Clinical child psychology and psychiatry · 2021Article
- 'I couldn't say the words': communicative bodies and spaces in parents' encounters with nonsuicidal self-injury.Social theory & health : STH · 2020Article
- The social life of self-harm in general practice.Social theory & health : STH · 2020Article
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Authors and funding
3 authors.
Funding
Abstract
This article makes the case for a sociological focus on the communicative, relational and interactional dimensions of nonsuicidal self-injury. While current research tends to be dominated by highly individual and intrapsychic models, it is increasingly observed that such models leave a social dimension to the practice unexplained. A burgeoning sociological literature has begun to address this paradox of the social in self-injury; however, we argue that the role of the social must be considered beyond the issues of aetiology, social learning and social construal/construction that are typically covered in this literature. Specifically, we argue that, since the lived meanings of self-injury directly implicate the interactional along with the intrapsychic, a more systematic focus on the role of social relations and social communication is vital. To illustrate this conceptual argument and embed it in the lived experiences of self-injury, we draw on two case studies taken from pilot research conducted by the authors. The more thoroughly sociological approach to self-injury that we present here offers an important compliment to the existing evidence base by reframing the absent presence of social communication contained within it, and suggesting important future directions for research.
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