BMJ  2005;331:788-789 (8 October), doi:10.1136/bmj.331.7520.788

Editorial

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Postcards from the hospital may lead to fewer episodes of self harm

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

England and Wales's recent national guideline about the early care of people who have deliberately harmed themselves¹ was launched to the media with the sorry admissions that "170,000 people a year attend emergency departments because they have self-harmed, of those an estimated 80,000 never receive a psychological assessment or follow-up even though the risk of committing suicide after self harming one or more times is 100 times greater than the average risk in the population" and "few people providing care in casualty understand why people self harm and don't know how to help them effectively." People who harm themselves also have an increased morbidity and mortality not related to suicide.²

The report by Carter and colleagues in this issue (p 805) describes one of the largest trials in self harm so far carried out.³ In a largely unselected sample of people attending the emergency department because of . . . [Full text of this article]

(s.hatcher@auckland.ac.nz)
Department of Psychological Medicine, University of Auckland, Private Bag 92019, Auckland 1, New Zealand

Institute of Health Sciences, University of Leeds, Leeds LS2 9LT

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This article has been cited by other articles:

• Read, S. L (2005). Postcards from the edge: Homelessness poses extra challenge in reducing self harm. BMJ 331: 966-966 [Full text]  
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bmj.com, 9 Oct 2005 [Full text]

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