Hi! I’m Dr. Janis Whitlock, creator of the Self Injury and Recovery Resources website. This site houses resources developed to support individuals with lived NSSI experience, professionals, and anyone affected by self-injury – directly or indirectly.
In 2004, I established the Cornell Research Program on Self-Injury and Recovery to investigate what was then widely perceived as a new and emerging behavior among youth and adults. My interest was sparked when self-injury entered my personal life through friends with youth who were cutting themselves to emotionally feel better. What began as a small study on college campus prevalence grew into something much larger than I could have imagined, primarily because the need for reliable information was so pressing.
Over the years, we’ve conducted numerous studies on a wide range of self-injury topics. While we always prioritized making sure that our findings could be effectively applied to real life situations and needs, the Self-Injury and Recovery and Resources (SIRR) website was developed early on to assure that the public had access to accurate, high quality resources. In addition, I retired from academia in 2022 so I could devote all of my professional time to assuring that everyone affected by self-injury – individuals with lived experience, families, and professionals – had the information and skills they need to support the healing and growth process.
This endeavor has been made possible through the invaluable assistance of many individuals, including key staff members, affiliated researchers, educators, clinicians, and numerous students. While some contributors are recognized through authorship, others have left their mark through behind-the-scenes efforts. I am deeply grateful for all these contributions, which have been instrumental in advancing our understanding of self-injury and supporting those affected by it.
Work With Me
Looking for help developing protocols, training your staff or community, identifying strategies of best supporting healing and growth, or creating measures or studies for tracking NSSI or other mental health challenges? I am available to work with you in a variety of ways:
- Training needs related to NSSI and other topics related to youth mental health and wellbeing, including examination of the link between social media and mental health
- Development of NSSI-specific protocols for schools and other institutional settings
- Identifying or creating evidence and strength-based intervention and prevention approaches, with a focus on building resilience and connectedness
- Development or identification of research tools and approaches for maximizing organization to detect and respond to NSSI and related conditions
- Development of specific resources for your population and settings
- One-on-one coaching for families or others affected by NSSI
- Provision of customized technical assistance to meet your specific needs
For more information about consultation services, contact her at jlw43@cornell.edu
About Janis Whitlock
Developmental psychologist. Translational researcher. Consultant. Perpetual student of what it means to help.
Where it began
I didn’t set out to spend my career studying self-injury. I set out to understand why some young people thrive — and why others struggle so profoundly to find their footing. That question led me, eventually, to some of the most misunderstood and stigmatized experiences in adolescent mental health.
Early in my career, working at the intersection of community health and youth development, I kept encountering the same gap: researchers were generating important findings, but those findings weren’t reaching the people who most needed them — the counselors, educators, clinicians, and administrators showing up every day for young people in pain. That gap became my life’s work.
Knowing the evidence is only half the equation. The other half is knowing how to use it.
Building the field
In 2004, I founded the Cornell Research Program on Self-Injury and Recovery (CRPSIR) at the Bronfenbrenner Center for Translational Research — one of the first programs in the world dedicated specifically to understanding non-suicidal self-injury in adolescents and young adults. What began as a small research initiative grew into a globally recognized program, producing over 60 peer-reviewed publications, developing validated assessment tools, and creating educational resources now used by families, clinicians, and educators worldwide.
Around the same time, it became clear that researchers working in this area needed a professional home — a place to share findings, debate frameworks, and build the kind of collegial trust that accelerates good science. In 2006, I convened the first meeting of what would become the International Society for the Study of Self-Injury (ISSS), serving as its founding president and watching it grow into the premier global organization advancing NSSI research, practice, and policy across more than 20 countries.
These weren’t just institutional achievements. They were expressions of a conviction I’ve held from the beginning: that young people’s suffering deserves serious, sustained, collaborative attention — and that the adults in their lives deserve the very best tools science can offer.
From research to real life
My academic home was Cornell University for nearly two decades — first as a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Human Development, then as a Research Scientist and Associate Director at the Bronfenbrenner Center for Translational Research, and now as Emerita Research Scientist. Throughout that time, my driving question was never just ‘what does the research show?’ but always ‘what does it mean for the person sitting across from a struggling teenager right now?’
That orientation shaped everything — the courses I taught, the grants I pursued, the partnerships I built with school districts, healthcare systems, and community organizations. It also led me to co-found the Cornell Summer Translational Research Institute, an intensive training program that prepared over 100 early-career researchers to bridge the gap between academic science and community practice.
In 2019, I formalized that commitment by founding Whitlock Consulting — bringing 25 years of research, training, and organizational partnership directly to the schools, clinics, nonprofits, and agencies working hardest on behalf of young people. Since then, I’ve partnered with more than 30 organizations across the country, from large urban school districts to state government agencies to residential care facilities, building protocols, training staff, and developing resources tailored to each setting’s unique culture and needs.
A whole-person approach
The longer I’ve worked in this field, the more convinced I’ve become that effective support for young people requires more than clinical technique. It requires adults who are genuinely curious about human experience — who understand that self-injury, like so many forms of suffering, is often a language spoken by people who haven’t yet found another way to say what needs to be said.
That belief shapes how I work. My approach is consistently strength-based, trauma-informed, and deeply attentive to the relational dimensions of healing. I’m as interested in what helps people recover and grow as I am in what causes harm. And I’ve increasingly come to appreciate the role of meaning, connection, and what I’d call the deeper dimensions of human experience in supporting lasting wellbeing — perspectives that inform my work even when they don’t appear explicitly in a training curriculum.
I split my time between Devon, England — where I live with my partner near the River Yealm — and the US, where most of my consulting work is based. That geographic distance has, unexpectedly, given me a broader vantage point on American youth mental health: what’s distinctive about it, what’s universal, and where the most promising edges of the field are heading.
Credentials & recognition
I hold a Ph.D. in Human Development from Cornell University, an MPH in Health Behavior and Health Education from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and a B.A. from UC Berkeley. My research has been cited over 6,900 times and my h-index of 38 reflects sustained impact across the field.
I am the co-author of Healing Self-Injury: A Compassionate Guide for Parents and Other Loved Ones (Oxford University Press, 2019) and co-editor of The Handbook of Non-Suicidal Self-Injury (Oxford University Press, 2024). My work has been featured in The New York Times, NPR, Good Morning America, TIME Magazine, and CBS News, among many others. I have presented and consulted internationally, including as Francqui International Professor at VUB in Brussels in 2022.
Ready to work together?
If you’re building something that matters for young people and you want a partner who brings both the science and the human understanding to make it work — I’d love to hear from you.
