Abstract

SELF-INJURY IS A COMPLEX phenomenon that is encountered on a regular basis by health care professionals in mental health care. In this article, I use the concept of epistemic injustice to examine this complex phenomenon and argue that this helps us to understand developments in the way we think about and support people who self-injure. Individuals with lived experience have important knowledge about the nature of self-injury and particularly how it relates to them. If the credibility of this knowledge is denied, for example through accusations of emotional instability, manipulation and attention seeking, then we may cause epistemic and non-epistemic harms. The former by denying the capacity for knowledge, by not...