Mental health can be challenging for many young people. Having an outlet to express feelings of darkness or sadness can be one way to help youth struggling with their emotions to feel heard and seen.

CHRIM Principal Investigator, Dr. Roberta Woodgate founded IN-GAUGE on the belief that young people have a right to be heard in research. The IN-GAUGE research program creatively engages children, youth and families as partner advisors in health and social sciences research projects with the goal to amplify their voices, improve their well-being and advance the care they receive.

Dr. Woodgate’s most recent project focused on youth who self-harm and explored the perspectives of the youth, their families and service providers. Self-harm can consume daily life, provoking a great deal of suffering among young people, their families, and their communities. Although there is a growing amount of research that focuses on self-harm in youth, what is often missing is understanding what it is like to be a youth who self-harms and how young people feel as they make their way through life.

Dr. Woodgate and her team at IN-GAUGE worked with young people to create a virtual art gallery that explores their journey of self-harm through art. Participants were invited to research interviews where they had a chance to share their stories of mental health struggles, particularly involving self-harm. They heard from young people that they felt like they could not talk about self-harm and that when they did, they were not always understood, resulting in stigma and a lack of knowledge and understanding around what it is like to live with feelings of needing to self-harm.

“Through this virtual art gallery, we hope to reduce the stigma and increase understanding of what it is like to be a youth experiencing NSSI (non-suicidal self-injury).” Dr. Roberta Woodgate, CHRIM Investigator, University of Manitoba, Distinguished Professor, and Canadian Research Chair (Tier 1).

View the gallery here.