The Tip of the Iceberg: Understanding and Responding to Self-Injury
Mental health professionals have struggled to understand self-injury for decades, with varying degrees of success and compassion. Self-injury can be a confusing behaviour to not only professionals but also to the teachers, parents and other loved ones. Treatment is never straight forward or short but it is important to know that self-injury is perfectly treatable as long as we know how to approach treatment and how to implement it.
In the past, because of the complexity of self-harming behaviours and a variety of issues involved in self-injury, clinical responses to self-injury have often been moderately beneficial, and in some cases, distinctly harmful. It is never a good idea to go too fast or request that the person simply “stops”. In all cases, the road to recovery is a journey but the successful recovery will come in the end of this process.
This course has been developed specifically to help practitioners feel more confident about responding to clients who present with self-injury. It will offer helpful guidelines to workers who wish to improve their capacity to respond effectively to clients who self-harm. A particular focus has been put on providing therapists, counsellors and other such professionals with a range of activities and techniques that can be used during the sessions or that can be utilized as homework.
All the information in this course has been translated into activities and exercises that can be used in therapy sessions as a resource conveying the same information to the client and using client’s language. You will be equipped with a range of suggestions and tools that can be immediately utilized in order to increase your client’s self-awareness and capacity to deal with distress instead of using self-injury as a coping tool.
Learning Objectives:
The program will cover:
- Understanding self-injury and its context
- Important differences between self-injurious and suicidal behaviours
- Exploration of the functions self-injury serves
- Techniques to increase client’s self-awareness
- Models of self-injury
- Strategies to reduce or stop self-injury
- Various treatment approaches which can be integrated to create an effective recovery model
CPD Information For Mental Health Professionals
Enjoy complete flexibility with 100% self-paced learning you can access anytime, anywhere, and on any device. Pay once for lifetime access.
Course Duration: 5 learning hours
Certificate and CPD hours: On completion you’ll receive a Certificate of Completion to support your CPD records.
Assessment: Complete a short quiz at the end (80% pass mark), which you can resit as many times as needed.
Lifetime Access: Your access to the course does not expire, so you can revisit key concepts anytime you want a refresher for practice.
CPD Eligibility: This program may be suitable for CPD for professionals such as:
- Psychologists
- Counsellors and Psychotherapists
- Social Workers
- Community Workers
- Mental Health Nurses
- General Practitioners (GPs)
- Occupational Therapists
CPD requirements vary between professional bodies, so please check with your association or credentialing body to confirm you can claim CPD hours/OPD points for this program and what evidence they require.
Course Content
Meet Your Instructor
Frontline mental health professionals struggling with complex cases - from suicidal clients to challenging personality disorders - need more than theoretical knowledge to make real-world impact. Hanna Nowicki has spent over 30 years bridging the gap between academic concepts and practical application, becoming one of Australia's leading mental health trainers and helping over 20,000 professionals develop confidence with their most difficult cases.
As Founder of TATRA, Nowicki brings a unique combination of legal expertise, psychology training, and extensive frontline experience to her teaching. Her remarkable career journey - from District Court Judge in Poland dealing with family law to Senior Practitioner in South Australia's Statewide Suicide Intervention Program - gives her unparalleled insight into both systemic and individual approaches to mental health crisis intervention. Her multilingual abilities and multicultural practice experience add crucial cultural competency to her training programs.
Nowicki's expertise spans suicide risk assessment, personality disorders, self-injury, depression, anxiety disorders, client engagement techniques, workplace debriefing, and multicultural mental health practice. Her approach focuses on practical "know-how" rather than abstract theory, showing professionals exactly what to do and say in challenging situations. She specialises in training professionals who work with high-risk populations, including those in child protection, correctional services, and community mental health settings.
What sets her training apart is real-world credibility. Nowicki doesn't just teach from textbooks - she draws from decades of direct practice in suicide prevention, child protection, and mental health services. Her work with government organisations like Centrelink, Correctional Services, and Housing SA demonstrates her ability to translate clinical knowledge into practical strategies that work in diverse professional settings.
For your practice, expect to gain specific techniques for engaging resistant clients, practical tools for suicide risk assessment, and frameworks for working effectively with personality disorders. Her interactive, high-energy teaching style particularly benefits practitioners who need confidence-building alongside skill development.
Quick Win: Nowicki's "engagement hierarchy" technique helps professionals quickly establish rapport with defensive or hostile clients by matching their communication approach to the client's presenting style - often creating breakthrough connections in the first encounter.
Qualifications
- LLM, Law, University of Adam Mickiewicz, Poznan, Poland, 1979–1983
- Postgraduate studies: Social Psychology, Psychology of Crime, Pathological Psychology, Criminology, University of Adam Mickiewicz, Poland, 1984–1985
- BA, Psychology, Flinders University, Australia
- Postgraduate Degree, Social Administration, Flinders University, Adelaide, 1992–1994
- Certificate IV in Training & Workplace Assessment
- Accredited De-briefer and Workplace Trainer
- Multilingual (speaks four languages)
Career & Leadership
- Founder, TATRA Corporate and Allied Health Training Services
- Professional Trainer & Speaker, Mental Health Education, Australia-wide, 1996–present
- State Manager, SA Mental Health Training Centre, NSW Institute of Psychiatry, 2005–2008
- Senior Practitioner, Statewide Suicide Intervention Program, South Australia, 1996–2005
Professional Background
- District Court Judge (Family Law), Poland, 1985–1989
- Legal Practitioner, Poland, early 1980s
- Social Worker, South Australian Mental Health Services, Adelaide, 1993–1996
- Child Protection Worker
- University Lecturer, Social Policy
Specialised Expertise
- Suicide risk assessment and intervention
- Personality disorders diagnosis and management
- Self-injury and self-harming behavior
- Depression and anxiety disorders
- Client engagement techniques for difficult cases
- Workplace debriefing and crisis response
- Multicultural mental health practice
Ready to transform your confidence with challenging mental health cases? Discover how Hanna Nowicki's practice-based approach can give you the real-world skills and cultural competency needed to make a genuine difference with your most difficult clients.
Feedback & Reviews
This course includes:
- Lessons 10
- Topics 0
- Duration 5 hours
- Quizzes 1
- Language English