Self-harm is
common, especially in young people. It
increases the likelihood that the person will eventually die
by suicide by between 50- and 100-fold above the rest of the population in a
12-month period. A wide range of
psychiatric conditions are associated with self-harm, such as borderline
personality disorder, depression, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, and drug and
alcohol-use disorders.





The focus of this guideline is to improve the longer-term care of people
who self-harm after initial treatment of the injury or poisoning (it covers people aged 8 years
and older). It reviews
the evidence for comprehensive assessment, psychosocial and pharmacological
interventions for both the self-harm and for any associated psychiatric
conditions, staff training, and consent, capacity and confidentiality issues. It contains all the evidence on which the
recommendations were based, including further data on a CD-ROM.





The guideline will be useful to
healthcare professionals in hospital medical care and mental health services,
plus general practitioners - as about half of the people who attend an
emergency department after an incident of self-harm will have visited their GP
in the previous month.





NICE Mental Health Guidelines



These
guidelines from NICE set out clear recommendations, based on the best available
evidence, for health care professionals on how to work with and implement
physical, psychological and service-level interventions for people with various
mental health conditions.



The book contains the full guidelines that
cannot be obtained in print anywhere else. It brings together all of the
evidence that led to the recommendations made, detailed explanations of the
methodology behind their preparation, plus an overview of the condition covering
detection, diagnosis and assessment, and the full range of treatment and care
approaches.



The accompanying free CD-ROM contains all the data used as
evidence, including:




Included and excluded studies.

Profile tables that summarise both the quality of the evidence and the
results of the evidence synthesis.

All meta-analytical data, presented as forest plots.

Detailed information about how to use and interpret forest plots.