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 varying degrees of compassion. Hanna Nowicki puts it that plainly, and adds the part that is harder to say: clinical responses have often been only moderately helpful, and in some cases distinctly harmful. Anyone who has felt out of their depth with a client who self-injures will recognise the assessment.
The behaviour is confusing to professionals and more confusing to the teachers, parents and partners who encounter it without any training at all. The instinct in all of them is the same, which is to get it to stop. Her argument is that this is the wrong first move, and that the behaviour is doing something for the person, which has to be understood before anything can replace it.
Five hours working through those functions one at a time: dissociation, communication, the euphoric feeling that follows, self-nurturing, self-punishment, re-enacting previous abuse, and establishing control. She separates self-injury from suicidal behaviour carefully, since conflating them changes the response and often makes it worse. Recovery is treated as a process with its own pace rather than a demand to stop, and the course includes activities, techniques and homework resources written in client-centred language, ready to adapt.
You’ll walk away with
- A clear distinction between self-injurious and suicidal behaviour, and why conflating them produces the wrong response
- The functions self-injury serves, worked through individually rather than listed
- Dissociation, communication and the euphoric feeling, and what each tells you about the client
- Self-nurturing and self-punishment as distinct purposes with different implications
- Re-enacting previous abuse, and establishing control
- The physiology of self-injury, and why understanding it changes how you talk about it
- Models of self-harm, and what each offers clinically
- Techniques to build a client’s own awareness of what the behaviour is doing for them
- Strategies for reducing or stopping, paced to the person rather than to your discomfort
- Psychoeducation for clients, and for the parents and teachers around them
- Activities, techniques and homework resources in client-centred language, ready to use
Watch the course trailer
CPD Information For Mental Health Professionals
Enjoy complete flexibility with 100% self-paced learning you can access anytime, anywhere, and on any device. This course is included with your Tatra Training membership, along with every other course in the library.
Course Duration: 5 learning hours
Certificate and CPD hours: On completion you’ll receive a Certificate of Completion to support your CPD records. Your certificates are yours to keep.
Assessment: Complete a short quiz at the end (80% pass mark), which you can resit as many times as needed.
Revisit Anytime: Come back to the course as often as you like while your membership is active, whenever 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