Deliberate Self-harm: Bench to Bedside

Abstract

Deliberate self-harm a non-fatal suicidal behavior is one of the major problems in many developing and developed countries. It is a major concern for clinicians and academicians, in which behavior is multiple and diverse in its presentation and often bewildering, vexing in the powers that drive them. To this day, general clinicians and research experts in the field of mental health have not agreed on which behaviors to include under the rubric of self-injury/deliberate self-harm/attempted suicide or on how to proceed and categorize them into a meaningful group. According to many researchers, deliberate self-harm refers to behavior through which individual deliberately inflict acute harm upon themselves, poison themselves, hang themselves or try to exhibit this behavior with nonfatal outcomes. Initially, these behaviors were often regarded as failed suicides. This view did not appear to be correct as the majority of the patients do not try to kill themselves, and there are substantial differences between communities in the prevalence of attempted suicide because these behaviors are somehow linked to attention-seeking rather resulting in death. All these behaviors share one thing in common that they occur in emotional turmoil, the degree of powerlessness and hopelessness of young people with low education, low income, unemployment, and difficulties in coping with life stress. These acts are often gratifying and cause minor to moderate harm. Some individuals repeatedly harm themselves, while others do it only once or a few times in their lifespan. Here we are trying to explore a few more issues related to deliberate self-harm.