‘I had a lot of anger and that’s what kind of led me to cutting myself’: Employing a social stress framework to explain why some homeless women self-injure

Abstract

The goal of this article is to address three research questions that are important for understanding selfinjuring behaviors among homeless women: (1) Do homeless women self-injure? (2) If so, do the correlates of self-injuring behavior among homeless women in our self-injuring group differ in type from stressors experienced by homeless women who do not self-injure? (3) Do women who have engaged in self-injuring experience a greater number of significantly stressful events than those who do not? To answer these questions, we draw on data from the 55 in-depth qualitative interviews conducted in Manchester and Liverpool, UK. What our research demonstrates is that self-injury occurs and, in our sample, is linked not only to age and length of homelessness, but also to experiences of childhood trauma. Women in our sample who have engaged in self-injuring behaviors were also found to have experienced three or more significant stressors over their life course.

Keywords:

• self-injuring
• homelessness
• trauma
• social stressors
• sociology