Background:

The phenomenon of self-harming behaviour is complex and diverse, so there is a need to see it in an individual, familiar and social frame. Portuguese as well as international studies try to understand it in a way that doesn´t focus enough on the family perspective.

Aim:

Understanding how the family experience a self-harming behaviour of a teenage child.

Methods:

The PICo method was used to review the literature based on the question: ”How does the family experience their teenager self-harming behaviour?”. Once the criteria for inclusion and/or exclusion were defined as well as the keywords, according to MeSH categories, research was conducted between November 2015 and February 2016.

Results:

A body of 10 articles, which were analysed and organised into three categories: psychic suffering, family crisis and needs. Understanding the family’s experience with the teenager’s self-harming behaviour has the family restructure itself as a system, performing the catharsis of the teenager-family conflict.

Conclusions:

When faced with a self-harming behaviour of one of their teenagers, the family is forced to reorganize itself as a system and to find a cathartic way of dealing with the conflict between the two (teenager and family). Teenage self-harming behaviour must be seen as a problem of public health which puts the present at risk and compromises the future of the teenager and their family. It is, therefore, urgent that there is a better understanding of this phenomenon, so that a global care to the family could be provided, inasmuch as it is an interactive and interdependent system.

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