A naturalistic study of the relationship between self-harm behaviors and Axis I diagnostic groupings among inpatients

Abstract

Self-harm behavior is relatively common among psychiatric patients, but few studies have examined such behavior in the context of Axis I diagnoses. In this study among 110 psychiatric inpatients, we examined clinical psychiatric diagnoses and surveyed participants for self-harm behaviors. Surprisingly, using five diagnostic groupings, there were no between-group differences in the endorsement of individual, total number of, or high-lethal self-harm behaviors. Our results suggest that the number and character of self-harm behaviors does not relate to psychiatric diagnosis among psychiatric inpatients.

• Diagnosis
• self-harm behavior
• inpatients

The authors wish to thank George A. Gaither, Ph.D., for his support in the development of this manuscript.