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APA Psychotherapy Training Videos are intended solely for educational purposes for mental health professionals. Viewers are expected to treat confidential material found herein according to strict professional guidelines. Unauthorized viewing is prohibited.
In Self-Injury, Dr. Wendy Lader demonstrates her brief analytic approach to working with clients who purposefully injure themselves. Self-injury, which often takes the form of cutting or burning, is best viewed as a coping strategy: Clients usually injure themselves because they want to avoid some painful emotion, and self-injury brings a sense of control over these unwanted feelings. Dr. Lader's approach is to analyze early childhood beliefs and relationships and then incorporate psychoeducation and cognitive–behavioral strategies into the session. Interventions are designed to reduce self-injury by increasing awareness of impulsive behavior and expressing any avoided emotions. In this session, Dr. Lader works with a teenage girl who began cutting herself soon after her mother remarried. Dr. Lader talks with the client about the loss of her father, then gives the client a tool to help her monitor the emotions she experiences preceding the impulse to cut herself. This is an excellent example of a first session with an adolescent client who self-injures.
The S.A.F.E. Alternatives® philosophy begins with the assumption that, although temporarily helpful, self-injurious behavior is ultimately a dangerous and futile coping strategy that interferes with intimacy, productivity, and happiness. There is no "safe" or "healthy" amount of self-injury. Dr. Lader and S.A.F.E. (Self Abuse Finally Ends) Alternatives also believe that self-injury is not an addiction over which one is powerless for a lifetime—people can and do stop injuring with the right kinds of help and support. Self-injury can be transformed from a seemingly uncontrollable compulsion to a choice.
Wendy Lader, PhD, is cofounder and clinical director of the S.A.F.E. Alternatives® Program at Mercy Hospital in Aurora, Illinois. S.A.F.E. stands for Self Abuse Finally Ends and is the only inpatient unit designed exclusively for the treatment of deliberate self-harm. An internationally recognized expert on the treatment of self-injury, Dr. Lader lectures extensively on the subject and is coauthor of the book, Bodily Harm: The Breakthrough Healing Program for Self-Injurers. Lader, in affiliation with the S.A.F.E. Alternatives® Program, has been featured on a variety of television programs such as Dateline NBC, 20/20, ABC World News Tonight, CNN, Good Morning America, The Today Show, and CAPA TV (Paris). In addition, she is cited frequently as an expert by the media, including The New York Times Magazine, The Chicago Tribune, Counseling Today, Teen People, Newsweek, Time, U.S. News and World Report, and Marie Claire (Paris). She was also interviewed for two Spanish-speaking television programs, produced by Catholic University of Chile TV Network Corporation and Univision.
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