A survey of self-neglect in patients living in the community

• Self-neglect is a familiar concept to all community nurses. Nevertheless there have been few empirical studies undertaken in this area over the last 30 years. • The study of self-neglect has been hampered by inadequate conceptualization and a lack of theoretical frameworks. • This article reports a study of patients who did and did not self-neglect, drawn from district nursing caseloads. • Patients with self-neglect had lower levels of operable self-care agency than patients in a comparison group. • Only self-neglecting patients had the nursing diagnoses `ineffective management of therapy' and `non-compliance'