College of Education and Health Professions faculty member Lindsay A. Lundeen recently received the Best Practices Research Faculty Award from the American Counseling Association.

Lundeen, an assistant professor in the Counselor Education and Supervision program in the college's Department of Counseling, Leadership and Research Methods, accepted the award at the association's national conference in Orlando, Florida.

The recognition highlights a best-practices, open-access article Lundeen co-authored with Erin Kern Popejoy, an associate professor in the counseling program. The article, "Cutting Through Stigma: Suggested Best Practices for a Harm Reduction Approach to Nonsuicidal Self-Injury," was published in the ACA's flagship journal, Journal of Counseling and Development.

Drawing on their combined clinical, research and teaching expertise, Lundeen and Popejoy examine the complexities of nonsuicidal self-injury behaviors while also highlighting how interactions with healthcare professionals can become inadvertently harmful — creating potential barriers that could prevent individuals from seeking professional medical or mental health help.

"The most important aspect of the article is advocating for incremental change and collaborative treatment planning, rather than trying to stop self-injury behaviors immediately or trying to serve as an expert in session with clients. Some people aren't ready for that," said Lundeen, a new faculty member in the college.

Erin Popejoy

To decrease harmful experiences for people seeking help for these behaviors, Lundeen and Popejoy emphasize many practical application suggestions for clinicians in their article, including:

• Introducing harm reduction when complete and immediate stopping feels impossible or isolating for clients.
• Suggestions for decreasing stigmatized practices by promoting compassionate inquiry, examination of clinician views or concerns, and creation of a collaborative space to discuss nonsuicidal self-injury without fear of repercussions.
• Implementation of multidisciplinary efforts including collaboration with medical providers to provide clinicians and clients with knowledge on first aid and wound care best practices.

The article also addresses how stigma may create discomfort among clinicians. As counselor educators, Lundeen and Popejoy emphasize training mental health professionals to respond with empathy while recognizing client autonomy and agency in treatment planning. Their approach challenges conventional clinical practices that typically demand immediate cessation of self-injurious behavior, by instead recommending strategies that establish appropriate community support networks while staying within one's role as a clinician. The publication is bookended with ethical considerations, concluding with a note that this is not for every clinicians' practice. However, it is something all clinicians should at least be aware of when referring clients to capable providers, Lundeen said.

C. Missy Moore, associate professor at the University of Georgia and quantitative associate editor of Journal of Counseling and Development, described the best practices publication as "a transformative piece of research that has the potential to redefine how clinicians approach NSSI treatment and harm reduction practices. Their work is a model of innovation, compassion and professionalism, and I am confident that this manuscript will continue to inspire and guide practitioners and researchers for years to come."

Lundeen's larger research focus includes self-directed violence harm reduction and intervention, including how some people use social media for seeking community, belonging and medical advice about suicide, addiction and NSSI, instead of consulting professionals. She has found that while online spaces offer a great deal of support, they can sometimes prevent people from seeking professional help and cause harm through vicarious trauma or secondary traumatic stress.