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Deliberate self-harm: service development in Kettering

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 January 2018

Catherine Gordon and
Andrew Blewett
Andrew Blewett*
Affiliation:
Kettering General Hospital
*
Correspondence: Dr Andrew Blewett, Kettering District Consultation Liaison Psychiatry Service, The Redcliffe Centre, 51 Hatton Park Road, Wellingborough, Northants NN8 5AH, England
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Abstract

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Services for deliberate self-harm patients in the general hospital are unsatisfactory in many respects. A survey of activity and quality in a district general hospital confirmed recent trends observed elsewhere and highlights areas in which service provision can be improved.

High rates of deliberate self-harm (DSH) are a public health problem. A study in Oxford showed rising rates among young women during the late 1980s, and a threefold increase in the proportion due to paracetamol poisoning between 1976 and 1990 (Hawton & Fagg, 1992). A multicentre European study found a trend of increasing peak age, a declining female to male ratio, and unexplained differences between regions (Platt, 1992). In the year following DSH, 9% repeat (Hawton & Fagg, 1992); and suicide rates reach 1.1 to 1.3% of patients in the three years following an episode of DSH (Owens et al. 1991).

Information

Type
Original Papers
Information
Psychiatric Bulletin , Volume 19 , Issue 8 , August 1995, pp. 475 - 477
Creative Commons
Creative Common License - CCCreative Common License - BY
This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC-BY) license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Copyright
Copyright © Royal College of Psychiatrists, 1995

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