Violence Toward Self Is Linked to Violence Toward Others

Although deliberate self-harm (DSH) is often considered within the spectrum of suicidality, these researchers have examined another question in a longitudinal cohort study — how much people who engage in this behavior are likely to hurt other people. Swedish medical and legal registers of treatment were analyzed for any form of DSH and conviction for any crime. Participants were 1,850,525 people who were born between 1982 and 1998 and were at least 15 years old at the start of the study (mean follow-up, 8 years).

Fewer than 1% of episodes of DSH (N=55,185) were high risk (suffocation, strangulation); almost 95% involved nonlethal cutting and poisoning, and <5% involved medium risk-methods (drowning or gassing). In analyses controlling for al…