Hello. My name is Samantha, and I suffer from SI (self injury). A few months back about eight or nine I was in a state of depression. I wasn't diagnosed it, but I know the symptoms and if I had gone to a doctor they would have told me I suffer from it. At the time I wasn't really liked, my boyfriend was in a different school than me, I had failed the grade I was in, and I was having trouble with my family. I felt worthless to the world. As though nothing or no one couldv'e changed it. My parents told me that they were going to put me into therapy but that never happened so I just kept cutting. I was talking to a women in my school for a few months about it. She was a lady who would come in and be my therapist for about a half an hour. But she would never make me talk about my cutting. So we mostly talked about fun things in my life that were happening and my boyfriend. I like her. She made me feel like I had one more friend in the world. Aside from her I only had my boyfriend. 
Well that didn't work out for me and I kept cutting. for about three moths straight. On and off durring the months sometimes for weeks and days straight. Then I finally did stop. After my aunt told me that I couldn't see my boyfriend I said that I would stop. So I did for a little while. About 2 months. Then I cut myself again. After I did that I stopped yet again. my family, friends, and my boyfriend thought they saw improvement. But inside me nothing had improved. I was still broken. The only thing that changed was that my scars were gone. But I still didn't cut for quite sometime. About 4 or 5 months. Until last night. I have so much to deal with I thought that was the only way out. So I went for it. And I accomplished what I had wanted to. Making myself bleed some of the pain out. 




 

Would you like to help us understand how to help people who self-harm?

Self-injury (sometimes called “self-harm”) involves harming yourself on purpose. Some examples include cutting or burning yourself, taking an overdose of pills, or banging your head. Right now, very little is known about why people start or stop self-harming. The Personality and Emotion Research Lab (PERL), a research team from Simon Fraser University in Canada, is conducting a study to learn more about the experiences of people who self-harm, and we want your help!  We are interested in how emotions, life experiences, stress and coping styles affect self-harm. We hope that this research will help other people understand more about why people self-harm and what they can do to help. 

What you can do: If you want to participate in this study, you will fill out online questionnaires on self-harm, emotions, coping, symptoms, and life events. These questionnaires will take approximately 2 hours to complete.  

Who can participate: We are looking for people who currently self-harm (whether you are trying to stop or not), those who have self-harmed in the past and quit, AND those who have never self-harmed.

What’s in it for you: Participants who complete the questionnaires will be paid $5 CAD (money transfers via PayPal). You can also choose to participate in our long-term study, where you will fill out a shorter version of the questionnaires every three months for two years. You will be paid $5 CAD each time you complete a set of questionnaires (about 30 min each), and you will get a $15 CAD bonus once you have completed all 9 sets for a total of $60 CAD. Telling us about your experiences will give us important information on how self-harm changes over time, and could help develop and improve treatments for people who want to stop self-harming.

Please contact us at perl@sfu.ca if you are interested in participating or if you have any questions.

Thank you,

Personality and Emotion Research Laboratory (PERL)

Simon Fraser University

Department of Psychology
RCB5246, 8888 University Drive
Burnaby, BC, Canada V5A 1S6