 In this series, I address your questions about self-harm. It's a tricky topic, but I want us to talk more about it. If I haven't answered your question yet, leave it in a comment below and I will attempt to address it in a future video. Sam asked whether drug and alcohol abuse count as self-harm, and it really depends. So different people have different opinions on this. When I'm teaching about self-harm, then I try to think of self-harm in the broadest possible sense. So I would think about things like drug abuse, alcohol abuse, binge eating, anything essentially where someone is engaging in an unhealthy means of coping would be something that I would consider self-harm. When you are engaging in an activity that does you harm or has the potential to harm you because you need to use that as a means of coping, of managing, of dealing with difficult emotions. If you were to look at the academic literature, they tend to have a very much more narrow range of definitions for self-harm and it does vary a little bit from place to place. But in terms of when we're looking at how we can support children and young people, then lots and lots of the methods that we would use to support someone who was perhaps injuring themselves. So through a more common means of self-harm like cutting, for example, we could use lots of the similar kinds of questions of thinking, of replacing that behavior with other healthier means. If we were working with someone who was struggling with drugs and alcohol. So it's a bit of a non-clear answer, but I guess if you're worried about someone and they are using drugs and alcohol to cope, then we'd ask similar questions. We try and look beyond the behavior and we try and understand what's motivating that and how can we help them move towards using a healthier means of coping.