‘You can’t provide psychological treatment to people who self-harm or who are suicidal’. Critically discuss this statement with reference to best practice and research in counselling and forensic psychology.
Task: To produce an essay based on Block 5
In this TMA you will produce an essay based on material covered in Block 5
Chapter 18
Chapter 18 ‘Self-harm and suicide’ (pages 253–266 in Mad or Bad: A Critical Approach to Counselling and Forensic Psychology) is particularly relevant for this question. The chapter includes definitions of both self-harm and suicide, some of the controversies surrounding self-harm, and working with both self-harm and suicide in therapeutic settings.
Week 23
The focus of this week is self-harm and suicide, and so much of the week is relevant. It is therefore up to you to be selective and find the best material to answer the question well. The section on prevalence of self-harm in prison will be useful to understand how widespread the problem is in prison. The later sections give some detail on how therapists adapt to the prison environment and the culture of risk.
TMA 05 is intended to assess your skills in critically discussing practice and research in counselling and forensic psychology and to employ appropriate evidence to construct an argument and draw conclusions. For this assignment you have a choice of writing an essay based either on topics covered in Week 22 on ‘Memory’ or topics covered in Week 23 on ‘Self-harm and suicide’.
Both questions invite you to critically discuss a statement using evidence for any claims you make. You can construct an argument that might favour one position more than another, for example you might agree or disagree with the statement, but you should try to provide a balanced evaluation and not be dismissive of the opposite view. A balanced evaluation will demonstrate an awareness of the other perspective and give a clear rationale for why you have taken a particular position in your argument.
For this TMA, it is important that you draw on additional material beyond that contained within the module website and textbook; this must consist of at least two articles that you have found through a citation search that you have conducted in Week 25 Activity 3.2. You will not be able to achieve higher than a Pass 4 grade without including at least two additional articles that you must find yourself and not from the ‘Independent study’ list provided in the VLE.
Please be aware that we always provide two possible topics for this TMA because some of the topics covered in this block of DD310 may be challenging for some students. If either of these topics is particularly difficult for you – perhaps because it relates to something you are going through personally at the moment, or is something you have very strong beliefs about – we would suggest choosing the other topic for your TMA.