Psychological assessment tools have been developed to evaluate nearly every disorder and symptom in existence. A number of scales have been developed to assess self-injury; we’ll look at several of them here in the months ahead, but for this post, I’ll focus on one of the first.
More than 20 years ago, the Self-Injury Trauma (SIT) scale was developed to enable clinicians and medical professionals to better assess and address varying levels of severity associated with different types of self-injury. While this checklist-type tool was helpful in focusing medical treatments or establishing goals for clinicians, it also shows an understanding of self-injury that is now dated. For example, the scale excludes the category of “burns” as a form of self-injury, explaining that it is rare in the population of self-injurers. On the contrary, burns appear to be a somewhat common form of self-injury, particularly in boys, and deserve just as much attention as other forms of injury.
Authors of the SIT scale should be applauded for beginning to address self-injury long before it was thought of as a distinct diagnosis. However, both the SIT scale’s dated conceptualization and concrete approach limit its usefulness. We at KISI do not recommend use of the SIT in clinical settings.
As clinicians, physicians, or friends and family of self-injurers, we are sorely in need of an up-to-date awareness, education, and treatment of self-injury so we can address it in the best way possible. In the months ahead, we’ll be posting information on a handful of newer assessment instruments that better reflect that up-to-date knowledge.
– Katie Rosenberry is a Fellow at the Kahn Institute for Self-Injury.