Managing Self-Harm Using Psychological Treatment Atman: A Guide for Counsellors

The book presents the session wise details of ATMAN psychological treatment for managing self-harm in youth in low- and middle- income countries. Based on global evidence, ATMAN treatment has been designed using a systematic, sequential approach and has been co-designed by the self-harm patients and mental health professionals in Mumbai, India. The word ATMAN in Sanskrit refers to the ＂eternal self’ that functions in harmony with the Universe.

Suicide is a leading cause of premature mortality across the world. Three quarters of global suicides occur in low- and middle-income countries. Most of the psychotherapies available to reduce the recurrence of self-harm have been developed and tested in high-income countries. Far less attention has been given to develop and evaluate context specific psychotherapeutic programmes for self-harm in low- and middle income countries.

The book includes contextually appropriate treatment elements; age appropriate and culturally relevant case vignettes and scripts; and is easy to understand for non-specialist providers. It is based on problem solving therapy integrated with emotion regulation and social network strengthening skills. Available treatments for self-harm are sub-optimal globally and this book might become an extremely useful resource for mental health professionals in high-income countries due to its easy to use format, brief structure, and utility for culturally diverse populations.

From the systems perspective, the possibility of scaling it up and training non-specialist counsellors to deliver this treatment in the community setting makes Managing Self-Harm Using Psychological Treatment ATMAN a very useful addition to the limited resources available to address the global health challenge of self-harm.

Dr Shilpa Aggarwal is a Child and Adolescent psychiatrist and Wellcome Trust India Alliance Research Fellow with an extensive work experience in the field across India and Australia. She is a Member of Faculty of Health, School of Medicine at Deakin University, Australia. She has led various research programs in youth mental health since 2006 including: development of a context specific stress scale extensively used for stress research; systematic review of data on suicide and mental health issues in adolescents in India; systematic review of risk and protective factors in youth self-harm in low- and middle-income countries; and led a series of studies to develop the psychological intervention for youth self-harm (on which ATMAN treatment is based). She was selected for the prestigious editorial board development programme of the journal Lancet psychiatry in 2019 and was awarded the emerging leaders publication award in 2022 from the Centre of Research Excellence for Driving Global Investment in Adolescent Health for a publication that provided a comprehensive assessment of the association between poor mental health and early marriage using a unique longitudinal large dataset of a representative sample of girls in Uttar Pradesh and Bihar.

Professor Michael Berk is currently a NHMRC Senior Principal Research Fellow, and is Alfred Deakin Chair of Psychiatry at Deakin University and Barwon Health, where he heads the IMPACT Strategic Research Centre. He also is an Honorary Professorial Research Fellow in the Department of Psychiatry, the Florey Institute for Neuroscience and Mental Health and Orygen Youth Health at Melbourne University, as well as in the School of Public Health and Preventive Medicine at Monash University. Professor Berk is a world authority in psychiatry research, and in 2019 he received Victoria’s highest scientific honour, the Victoria Prize for Science and Innovation. With over 900 published papers, he was listed by Thompson Reuters ISI as highly cited (2015- 2019). His major interests are in the discovery and implementation of novel therapies, and risk factors and prevention of psychiatric disorders.

The late Professor George Patton AO MBBS MD FRANZCP FRCPsych was a medically qualified epidemiologist with a clinical background in child and adolescent psychiatry. Professor Patton’s research was based at the Royal Children’s Hospital Centre for Adolescent Health, the University of Melbourne, and the Murdoch Children’s Research Institute. Professor Patton was internationally recognised for his immense contributions to the field of adolescent health, both in Australia and internationally. With continuous funding from Australia’s National Health and Medical Research Council for over two decades, for the five years until his death in late 2022, he was among the top 0.1% of cited researchers in the world across all fields of medicine and was the most highly cited of those working in adolescent health. Professor Patton’s research and advocacy, including his leadership of the 2016 Lancet Commission on Adolescent Health and Wellbeing, helped shape global policies and priorities around adolescent health and wellbeing. From a field that he referred to as one that was characterised by ’benign neglect’, Professor Patton’s efforts helped position adolescent health, including mental health, to sit at the forefront of international health agendas. A generous research collaborator, supervisor and mentor to many, his most relevant studies to this book include national and international trials of community-based interventions, including the Gatehouse Project, a study that strongly showed the influence of school social environments on health and the scope of schools as a site for effective interventions; and the Victorian Adolescent Health Cohort Study, that has described the natural history of common mental disorder, self-harm, substance use from adolescence into adulthood.

Professor Craig Olsson is a Developmental Psychologist with expertise in life course epidemiology and human genetics. He is an Alfred Deakin Professor and holds a National Health and Medical Research Council Fellowship (Investigator Grant). He has been based at the Royal Children’s Hospital since 1994, completed his PhD through the University of Melbourne in 2000, and holds a joint appointment in life course epidemiology with the Murdoch Children’s Research Institute where he co-convenes the Life Course Initiative. Prof Craig is a former recipient of a Discovery Outstanding Researcher Award from the Australian Research Council and directs one of Australia’s oldest running longitudinal studies of social-emotional development, The Australian Temperament Project Generation 3 Study. He is actively involved in a number of Australasian cohort studies and is National Convener of the Australian Research Alliance for Children and Youth (ARACY) Longitudinal Studies Network. He has a particular interest in promoting understanding of the developmental years, from childhood to adulthood and into the next generation.