TY - JOUR AU - Ostertag, Louise AU - Golay, Philippe AU - Dorogi, Yves AU - Brovelli, Sebastie§n AU - Bertran, Marta AU - Cromec, Ioan AU - Van Der Vaeren, Bénédicte AU - Khan, Riaz AU - Costanza, Alessandra AU - Wyss, Karine AU - Edan, Anne AU - Assandri, Francesca AU - Barbe, Rémy AU - Lorillard, Solenn AU - Saillant, Stéphane AU - Michaud, Laurent PY - 2019/02/04 Y2 - 2024/03/29 TI - The implementation and first insights of the French-speaking Swiss programme for monitoring self-harm JF - Swiss Medical Weekly JA - Swiss Med Wkly VL - 149 IS - 0506 SE - Original article DO - 10.4414/smw.2019.20016 UR - https://smw.ch/index.php/smw/article/view/2574 SP - w20016 AB - <p><strong>AIMS OF THE STUDY</strong> <p>Self-harm is a major risk factor for suicide but remains poorly documented. No data on self-harm in French-speaking Switzerland exist. To address this deficiency, the Swiss Federal Office of Public Health commissioned a specific self-harm monitoring programme. We present and discuss its implementation and first findings.</p> <strong>METHODS</strong> <p>Every patient aged 18–65 years presenting for self-harm to the emergency departments of the Lausanne and Neuchâtel general hospitals were included in the monitoring programme over a 10-month period (December 2016 to September 2017). Clinicians collected anonymous sociodemographic and clinical data.</p> <strong>RESULTS</strong> <p>The sample included 490 patients (54.9% female and 45.1% male) for 554 episodes of self-harm, showing a higher proportion of patients aged 18–34 (49.2%) than older age groups (35–49, 33.7% and 50–65, 17.1%). Patients were mostly single (56.1%) and in problematic socioeconomic situations (65.7%). Self-poisoning was the most commonly used method (58.2%) and was preferred by women (71% of females and 42.5% of males, Fisher’s exact test, p &lt;0.001) and the majority of patients (53.3%) had experienced at least one previous episode of self-harm. The self-harm rate was 220 per 100,000 inhabitants in Lausanne and 140 in Neuchâtel. Suicidal intent was clear for 50.6% of the overall sample, unclear for 25.1% and absent for 24.3%. It differed significantly between sites (χ<sup>2</sup>(2) = 9.068, p = 0.011) as Lausanne reported more incidents of unclear intent (27.7% versus 17.4% in Neuchâtel) and Neuchâtel more incidents with absence of intent (33.1% versus 21.3% in Lausanne). In Lausanne, patients more frequently resorted to methods such as jumping from a height (11.4%) and hanging (9%) than in Neuchâtel (1.6% and 4.9%, Fisher’s exact test, p = 0.006).</p> <strong>CONCLUSIONS</strong> <p>Our results are globally consistent with previous research on self-harm. We found significant inter-site differences in methods, suicidal intent and self-harm rates. Our findings highlight the importance of implementing local self-harm monitoring to identify specific at-risk groups and develop targeted preventive intervention.</p></p> ER -