Met a a CPN (community psychiatric nurse) (lets call him Mark, not his real name) on Tuesday for an assessment. He had training in handling difficult behaviour.

It’s not what you think, his training focussed on understanding why someone would do something, and how to work with them.

So his first response to me self-harming is why did it happen, not how to deter or stop it. Although how to avoid it happening does come later, and the procedure is based on understanding the person.

He did understand that a lot of staff didn’t really want to focus on the triggers, just avoiding the problem of self-harm, especially when they are the triggers. Obviously 99% of staff don’t have the behavioural training, I really wish they did.

Oh, and as a double-plus I found out that my current social worker definitely subscribes to the same view as Mark, I’d suspected that beforehand though, as her behaviour towards me indicated that.

This gives me a bit of hope that the CMHT might be able to help me.

P.S. I’m an unusual case for Mark, usually he’s called in to deal with aggressive/uncooperative behaviour, that isn’t me, but he was still the best option. For me it was that stuff triggered me to self-harm, but most staff had (some?) trouble figuring out how to help and reduce incidents.

P.P.S I’m not sure just giving all staff behavioural training would work, as some have been on the job for long enough that their mindset that “the patient is always the one at fault, not the system they’re in, and definitely not any staff”. I’m not sure what would be required to fix that, other than making sure that new staff don’t develop the mindset so that eventually it’ll disappear as staff retire.