Students write a script to encourage people who self-harm to reach out.
Photo: Unknown
One in five high school students report having engaged in self-harm at some point, according to a Wellington study.
Victoria University’s Youth Wellbeing Study is done every year with the same group of about 1000 students from 14 high schools in the Wellington region each year. It consistently finds that 20 percent of students harm themselves, says clinical psychologist Dr Jessica Garisch.
Previous research conducted in 2010 with senior students suggested almost half of students self-harmed by the time they finished high school.
The university has partnered with the Wellington Boys' and Girls' Institute and Bro Town cartoonist Ant Sang to release a comic book that they hope will make it easier for teenagers about issues like self-harm and bullying.
Called A Change, it tells the story of Ash, who starts to self-harm after a video of them is posted on social media.
“This comic is designed to enable a conversation with young people and the people who support them, parents, adults, counsellors to make it permissible to talk about the topics contained in the story. Topics like self-injury, bullying, and social situations,” Wellington BGI youth worker Rod Baxter said.
The comic is being sent to youth workers, guidance counsellors and more than 20 schools in the Wellington region.
A group from BGI wrote a script for Sang, who then worked with them to sketch out the comic.
“The hope for the comic is that it will reach people who self-harm, or people who know people who self-harm, and that it will be a resource to help,” says Sang.
Abigail Chan, who worked on the project as part of the BGI group, said she knew “quite a few people” who had dealt with non-suicidal self-injury.
“I feel we learnt a lot about how to understand them and where they’re coming from which is pretty important.”
The group worked with Victoria University to understand the issue first and then started writing with Sang.
“While we were talking he was sketching things. We really got to see our ideas come to life. Which was a really awesome thing, ‘cause we had ideas but it’s not the same as seeing them on paper.”