The school counselling service presents the organizational form of support and assistance to all participants in educational institutions, especially children and adolescents, when they find themselves in a variety of challenging situations, including in the case of self-harm. In this master's thesis, we examined the role of the school counselling service in working with adolescents who self-harm.
In the theoretical part, we first described some aspects of the period of adolescence and the mental health of adolescents. We further defined self-injurious behaviour, presented its functions, risk factors and protective factors, as well as the incidence of self-injury among adolescents. Then, we positioned self-harming behaviour in the school space. We defined the school counselling service, its activities and functions, and we also focused on the importance of the school counselling service participating with external institutions. We further focused on identifying self-harming behaviour, presented the importance of the first response by the school counsellor, and defined the role of the school counselling service in working with adolescents who self-harm. We concluded the theoretical part by presenting the preventive functioning of the school counselling service in the field of self-harming behaviour.
The results of the qualitative research are presented in the empirical part. The results were obtained with the help of semi-structured interviews, which we conducted with five female school counsellors employed at geographically selected Slovenian secondary schools. The research questions related to four substantive sections: general self-injurious behaviour; working with adolescents who self-harm and working with their parents; cooperation of the school counsellor with the school management, teachers and external institutions; the qualifications of school counsellors to work with adolescents who self-harm and their personal experience of this problem. We have found that school counsellors have a challenging role in recognizing and working with adolescents who self-harm. School counsellors report that they most often learn from others about a self-harming adolescent and respond appropriately to the situation. They report that they have a basic knowledge of self-harming behaviour and have acquired basic counselling skills to work with adolescents who self-harm and their parents. They also emphasize that they do not carry out preventive activities on the topic of self-harming behaviour, but mention it indirectly within other topics. School counsellors see their role in working with young people who self-harm primarily as counselling, guidance in seeking external help, and offering support.
Despite some limitations of the conducted research, the findings show possible practices in the field of recognition and work with adolescents who self-harm. These can serve as an incentive for evaluating the school counsellors’ practice, additional professional training in this area, and further research into the issue.
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