You still feel different: The experience and meaning of women's self-injury in the context of a lesbian or bisexual identity

This article reports an intensive qualitative study, of the subjective experience and meaning of self-injury for 16 women who identified as lesbian or bisexual and who had deliberately self-injured on repeated occasions. In individual interviews, the women talked about their experiences of self-injury and the role it played in their lives as lesbian or bisexual women. Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA) was used to elicit themes arising within their accounts. These highlighted a number of ways in which social and contextual factors contributed to the development of self-injury. Although many of these factors seemed applicable to any woman who self-injures, there were some aspects that were specific to the experience of lesbian and bisexual women. In addition, the women's accounts raised a number of important issues about the way in which mental health services respond to lesbian and bisexual women who self-injure. It is argued that self-injury can be understood as a coping response that arises within a social context characterized by abuse, invalidation, and the experience of being regarded as different or in some way unacceptable. These factors are especially salient in the lives of women, and they emerge particularly strongly as part of the experience of women who are developing a lesbian or bisexual identity. Copyright (C) 2004 John Wiley Sons, Ltd.