Creating Autistic suffering: CAMHS advise “safe cutting” for Autistic children

This article was co-authored by Tanya Adkin and David Gray-Hammond

This article contains detailed discussion of self-harm and CAMHS failures

Please Sign this petition regarding CAMHS refusal to see Autistic children and attend this protest if you can.

For those of you who are unfamiliar with Tanya’s work outside of this blog series, Tanya specialises in what services like CAMHS would call “complex presentations”. To consider it another way, Tanya is called in when professionals don’t know what to do. A lot of this work consists of working alongside independent social workers for the assessment, care and support planning, and delivery of short-term crisis intervention support to Autistic people who are experiencing complicating factors such as; criminal exploitation, co-occurring psychiatric conditions, disordered eating, “violent and challenging behaviour”, and self-injurious behaviours. David (in his professional life) is a qualified independent advocate who has spent quite some time deconstructing and shining a light on the failures of Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services (CAMHS). In this article we’re going to focus on a specific type of self-injurious behaviour in the form of cutting, and the guidelines surrounding it’s management.

CAMHS refusing to treat different people differently is a form of disability discrimination

This type of presentation is not unique to Autistic experience, however, there is an element of it that is unique and widely misunderstood by services. Services such as CAMHS are taking a one-size-fits-all harm reduction approach to cutting. The problem is that this does not take account of the sensory element of cutting for Autistic people. More and more often, what we are seeing, what we are hearing, is CAMHS advice which is essentially just to let Autistic children cut, but from a position of “safe cutting”. Let’s take a look at some of the NICE guidance in this area:

“During the psychosocial assessment, explore the functions of self-harm for the person. Take into account:

the person’s values, wishes and what matters to them

the need for psychological interventions, social care and support, or occupational or vocational rehabilitation
any learning disability, neurodevelopmental conditions or mental health problems
the person’s treatment preferences
that each person who self-harms does so for their own reasons
that each episode of self-harm should be treated in its own right, and a person’s reasons for self-harm may vary from episode to episode
whether it is appropriate to involve their family and carers; see the section on involving family members and carers.”

A portion of the guidance for self-harm within NICE guidelines, full guidance here.

If all of these things were fully taken into account in terms of Autistic children, “safe cutting” would never be the recommendation.

Interoception

Interoception is one of the eight senses, it is the ability to read and decipher internal bodily signals. This may include things such as; hunger, thirst, needing the toilet, emotions, but more importantly, it affects how we experience pain and injury. It’s almost a logical impossibility for Autistic children that are receiving the care of CAMHS to not have interoceptive differences. We know that 50-85% of Autistic people have alexithymia (interoceptive under-responsiveness in terms of emotion) (Click here for more information). We also know how bad things need to be for CAMHS to even accept a referral of an Autistic young person. Interoceptive differences have a high correlation with trauma and other mental health differences (Adkin, 2023). It stands to reason that Autistic people who meet a CAMHS threshold will have significant differences in their interoceptive sense.

Autistic children with interoceptive differences can not cut safely

What Autistic children need is the support that is outlined in NICE guidance. But because of a lack of competence (Adkin & Gray-Hammond, 2023) and understanding around interoception within the context of Autistic experience CAMHS have created dangerous situations for Autistic children and their families. When we look at suicidality rates in Autistic young people, rates of up to 28 times more than non-Autistic young people (Royal College of Psychiatrists, accessed 2023); does “safe cutting” play a role in this?

People who experience pain and injury differently, and dynamically, can not safely engage in self-injurious behaviours.

Why do Autistic people cut?

“Sensory disturbances are predictive of self-injury in Autistic people.”

Moseley et al (2020)

“there remains a concerning relationship between self-injury and suicidality which exists regardless of individual feelings on self-injury. This is consistent with the theoretical perspective that self-injury can be a “gateway” through which individuals acquire capability for lethal suicidal behaviors.”

Moseley et al (2020)

To summarise the above; A lot of Autistic people engage in self-injurious behaviour due to sensory difference. Self-injury among the Autistic population is highly predictive of suicidality.

CAMHS use “safe cutting” to guard resources

Advising safe cutting actually serves as a way of removing young people from CAMHS caseloads by normalising self-injurious behaviour. It offers false reassurance to parents that this is okay and that their child is not at risk, because CAMHS said so. It is a classic case of services abusing their perceived authority to gatekeep resources. “Safe cutting” advice is bypassing the NICE guidance in a way that removes the responsibility from CAMHS and places it onto the young person. If a young person suffers significant injury under the advice of “safe cutting”, it is the parents and carers who will be facing safeguarding investigations, not services like CAMHS.

So, How should CAMHS deal with this?

We need competent and effective assessment, care planning, and intervention delivery. Any approach to self-injury needs to take account of the Autistic young person’s sensory profile, and adapt it’s strategy to that. They need sensory-integration occupational therapy assessment and provision to address sensory needs. This is needed to address the sensory need that self-injury is meeting. They need social care assessments that are thorough and holistic, taking into account individual needs, educational needs, and medical needs. They need social workers that are competent in neurodivergent experience to ensure effective, multi-agency care and support planning and delivery.

What can you do if you have received this advice?

If you have been advised that “safe cutting” is the answer to self-injurious behaviour, please refer back to the linked NICE guidelines. Be prepared to follow formal complaint policies, when undoubtedly the guidance has not be followed, and ensure that you request occupational therapy input as per NICE guidelines.

Please Sign this petition regarding CAMHS refusal to see Autistic children and attend this protest if you can.

References

Adkin, T. (2023). What is meerkat mode and how does it relate to AuDHD? Emergent Divergence.

Moseley, R. L., Gregory, N. J., Smith, P., Allison, C., & Baron-Cohen, S. (2020). Links between self-injury and suicidality in autism. Molecular autism, 11, 1-15.

RCP (Accessed 2023) Suicide and Autism, a national crisis. Royal College of Psychiatrists