Study on Psychiatric morbidity and socio demographic profile in cases of deliberate self harm

Background:Deliberate self harm places a considerable drain on the resources of the health care system. They form a substantial burden on health services. With these present conditions, this study was undertaken to assess the psychiatric morbidity and socio-demographic profile of patients with “deliberate self harm” admitted in the general hospital.Material:The study was conducted at general hospital over a period of six months. We included 50 patients from various units those who got admitted for deliberate self harm, self poisoning, self injury, self immolation, etc. After stabilization the patients were subjected to a detailed psychiatric evaluation to understand the basic precipitating cause besides treatment or counseling. In our study, we observed that 62% of the patients had psychiatric morbidity, out of which substance use disorders (22%) and adjustment disorder (22%) were most common. Depression was present in 18%, while 6% had schizophrenia, and only 2% had mental retardation. In this study, we found that the association between psychiatric morbidity with age (p<0.001), occupation (p<0.01), residence (p=0.002) and type of family (p=0.004) was highly significant.Conclusion:Improving the facilities for management of common psychiatric illnesses at primary care level would probably help towards the ultimate goal of prevention of deliberate self harm. Keywords: Psychiatric morbidity, Socio-demographic variables, Deliberate Self harm, Depression, Schizophrenia, Mental retardatio