Suicidal behaviours are major public health concerns, associated with many risk factors that vary with sociodemographical features.

To compare the differences between patients visiting the emergency room (ER) for self-inflicted injury vs those needing psychiatric consultation for other reasons, as far as their occupational and accommodation status are concerned.

To evaluate the influence of the economic scenery on suicidal behaviours.

Determinants of ER psychiatric consultations were studied prospectively from 2008 to 2011 at the “Maggiore” Hospital in Novara. Comparison of qualitative data was performed by means of the x2 test, or the Fisher’s Exact test in case of expected frequencies less than 5. All tests were two-sided and a P value less than 0.05 was considered as statistically significant.

In a sample of 1888 psychiatric consultations, 281 (14.9%) were due to self-inflicted injuries. The preliminary analysis of socio-demographical features showed that self-harm behaviours are significantly more frequent among employed vs unemployed or disabled subjects (20.1% vs 13.2%; p=0.0005) and among those living in their immediate or own family vs those living alone or in therapeutic facilities (17.0% vs 13.0% vs 8.4%; p=0.012).

In contrast to current literature, our study shows that individuals living in more favourable conditions are at greater risk of attempting suicide. These results might be associated to the current Italian economic scenery, and to emerging difficulties as far as keeping an income to adequately maintain a family are concerned.