Self-Injury Awareness Day

Each year, the 1st of March is designated as SIAD around the world. It's a time when we can all come together to help raise awareness about self-injury. SIAD has been running for many years, and has become more and more popular in the UK over the last few years, and FirstSigns is proud to lead the UK in self-injury awareness by providing support, information, factsheets and posters for everyone to use.

On this page you will find:

1. Things to do during February;
2. Factsheets to print and distribute;
3. Posters to pin up at work / school / college / uni;
4. Templates for Letters to send to newspapers and radio shows, MPs, doctors and teachers;
5. The SIAD Game!
6. Our free Book to download;
7. Guidance for a School / College Self-Injury Policy
8. Our free SIAD Newsletter to download;
9. Details of 'Tell Someone Month'.

Things you can do to raise awareness

Buy Awareness Keyrings and Wristbands from FirstSigns

They're fab, and they don't say 'self-injury' on them, so if your friends ask “what's the orange keyring for?” you can just say 'charity' or you can talk about the work FirstSigns does.

• View all Wristbands and Keyrings

Spread the word about this page

www.selfinjury.org.uk/siad/

• Could you link to this page from your website or blog?
• Could you write a note about this page on Bebo, Facebook, MySpace or your fave Social Networking site?
• Could you email your friends with the link?
• Could you mention this page on your fave Message Board?

'Attend' our SIAD Event on Facebook

It has no 'location' so everyone is free to 'attend'!

• View our Event and choose to 'attend'

Write a letter

You could use our template letter to write to your MP, your doctor, your school / teacher, your local radio station, your local newspaper, your local TV news, your favourite magazines – the whole media!

Our template letter is also appropriate for email of course.

Template SIAD Letter [RTF / Word; 9KB]

Feel free to mix our letter up, put your own words into it!

Send out / Stick up our Factsheets

Along with the letter (or without) send the appropriate Factsheet to:

1. your parents or guardians; Parents' Factsheet [PDF; 480KB]
2. your school, college or welfare officers at uni; Teachers' Factsheet [PDF; 450KB]
3. your RGN or doctor / psychologist; Healthcare Worker Factsheet [PDF; 600KB]
4. your friends; Friends' Factsheet [PDF; 450KB]
5. the local media;
6. your male friends who self-injure; Males' Factsheet [PDF; 450KB]

Stick up our Posters

Print our posters on A4 paper (or larger if you can) and ask permission to stick them up at your local library, in your school / college / uni and even at work.

Our posters have 'tear-off' bits at the bottom so passers by can take our web address with them.

1. Poster: What's behind self-injury? [PDF; 2MB]
2. Poster: Emotional distress does not discriminate [PDF; 2MB]
3. Poster: How much do you really know about self-injury? [PDF; 2MB]
4. Poster: Break the stigma, break the cycle [PDF; 2MB]

To save a PDF poster, 'right-click' on its link and select 'Save Target As...' and save it to your computer.

Play the SIAD Game and forward it to your friends

• The SIAD Game [.exe; 430KB]
• The SIAD Game Version 2 [.exe; 430KB]

To save the SIAD Game to your desktop, 'right-click' on the link above and select 'Save Target As...' and save the file to your desktop - now just click or double click on the "siad-game.exe" program and it will launch.

OR, you can just click it as normal and click 'run' or 'save' when the box pops up!

To forward the game to your friends, either email them with this web page address: www.selfinjury.org.uk/siad/ or email them the direct address for the game: www.selfinjury.org.uk/downloads/siad-game.exe

You may well enjoy playing the game for 20 minutes or so, but if you want to beat the clock, you'll need to complete the puzzle in less than 9 minutes!

Many thanks to Keith for creating this puzzle game for FirstSigns and SIAD.

Download the FirstSigns SI Awareness Book

It's only 50 odd pages, but it's a handy resource to have around.

FirstSigns Self-Injury Awareness Book - 2nd Edition (Revised) [PDF; 500KB]

For printing on A5 paper, or, two pages per A4.

Help your teachers create a Self-Injury Policy for your School or College

Our guidance document helps headteachers and principles consider what is necessary for a school self-injury policy; it's a very popular document, please download it for your school or college / uni.

Creating a School Self-Injury Policy [PDF; 240KB]

Download our newsletter, LifeSHINES- the SIAD issue

Great articles, beautifully designed, free to everyone. Sign up now to receive it via email.

LifeSHINES 29 - SIAD issue [PDF; 1MB]

Tell Someone Month

SIAD is just one day, and we hope it helps everyone to focus on raising awareness about the subject of self-injury, which is often a very difficult matter to discuss.

If you self-injure, find out more about our 'Tell Someone' project, and get yourself a free sticker!

• The 'Tell Someone' Project

You will need Adobe Acrobat Reader to open PDFs, which is free from Adobe, and every computer should have it!

All files, programs and downloads within the FirstSigns website have been scanned for virusses, and you are encouraged to scan all files that you download.

You can contact the Directors of FirstSigns from the Directors Page and email FirstSigns on info@firstsigns.org.uk and you may contact the Webmaster on webmaster@firstsigns.org.uk.