The association between social relationships and self-harm: a case–control study in Taiwan

BMC Psychiatry

Research Article

Hui-Chun Huang¹  Chia-Yi Wu²  Robert Stewart³  Chin-Kuo Chang³  Shen-Ing Liu⁴ 

[1] Department of Medical Research, Mackay Memorial Hospital, Taipei, Taiwan, 45, Min-Sheng Road, Tam-Shui, New Taipei City, Taiwan;Mackay Medicine, Nursing and Management College, Taipei, Taiwan, 92, Shengjing Rd., Beitou Dist, 11260, Taipei City, Taiwan;Department of Nursing, College of Medicine, National Taiwan University, 1, Section 1, Jen-Ai Road, 10051, Taipei, Taiwan;King’s College London (Institute of Psychiatry), London, UK, De Crespigny Park, SE5 8AF, London, UK;Mackay Medicine, Nursing and Management College, Taipei, Taiwan, 92, Shengjing Rd., Beitou Dist, 11260, Taipei City, Taiwan;Department of Psychiatry, Mackay Memorial Hospital, Taipei, Taiwan, 45, Min-Sheng Road, Tam-Shui, New Taipei City, Taiwan;

关键词: Case–control study;    Self-harm;    Suicide;    Social support;    Isolation;    Taiwan;   

DOI  :  10.1186/1471-244X-13-101

 received in 2012-05-08, accepted in 2013-03-21,  发布年份 2013

来源: Springer

【 摘 要 】

BackgroundAlthough suicide has been postulated as a result of social breakdown, relatively little attention has been paid to the association between social relationships and non-fatal self-harm. We sought to investigate the extent to which social factors correlate with self-harm in this case–control study.MethodsThe primary outcome was self-harm with hospital presentation. Cases of self-harm from the Emergency Department in a general hospital in Northern Taiwan were recruited, and individually age-and-gender-matched control participants were recruited from non-psychiatric outpatient clinics at the same hospital. The Close Persons Questionnaire was administered and its social support and social network subscales were used to measure social relationships in the 12 months prior to the interview. Other covariates, comprising sociodemographic factors, major life events, physical and mental health, were adjusted in conditional logistic regression models.ResultsA total of 124 case–control pairs were recruited. The mean (standard deviation) age of the case group was 34.7 (12.8) years and 80.6% were female. Higher social isolation score remained significantly associated with self-harm after adjustment (adjusted odds ratio per standard deviation increase 2.92, 95% confidence interval 1.44-5.95) and household size was negatively associated with the outcome (adjusted odds ratio per unit increase 0.54, 95% CI 0.32-0.94).ConclusionsMore limited social networks were associated with self-harm after adjustment for potential confounders. Enhancing social structure and effective networking of people with self-harm to community resources may be important for self-harm management in Asian societies and elsewhere.

【 授权许可】

Unknown   
© Wu et al.; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. 2013. This article is published under license to BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.