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What Happens to Patients Who Frequently Harm Themselves?

A Retrospective One-Year Outcome Study

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 January 2018

Ruth Stocks  and
Allan I. F. Scott
Ruth Stocks
Affiliation:
University Department of Psychiatry
Allan I. F. Scott*
Affiliation:
University Department of Psychiatry, The Kennedy Tower, Royal Edinburgh Hospital, Morningside Park, Edinburgh EH10 5HF
*
∗Correspondence
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Abstract

Between 1982 and 1987, 42 patients were selected who had been admitted three times in one week to the Regional Poisoning Treatment Centre in Edinburgh for the treatment of deliberate self-harm. Most (87%) of these admissions related to drug overdose. Most of the patients were young, unemployed, lacking a partner and from the low social classes. Three-quarters of the sample had at least one known conviction and more than a third were known to have served a prison sentence. There was only one patient in whom mental illness was thought to be relevant to the episode of self-harm, although five patients were mildly mentally handicapped. Case notes were reviewed to assess the outcome one year after the index admission. None of the patients had committed suicide, although 36 repeated self-harm during the follow-up year.

Type
Research Article
Information
The British Journal of Psychiatry , Volume 158 , Issue 3 , March 1991 , pp. 375 - 378
Copyright
Copyright © Royal College of Psychiatrists, 1991 

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