National Center for Chronic and Noncommunicable Disease Control and Prevention, Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention, Beijing 100050, China. Email: linhong@chinawch.org.cn.
OBJECTIVE: To understand the characteristics of self-inflicted injury/suicide cases that were seen from the clinic or the emergency rooms, to provide basis for suicide prevention strategies development.
METHODS: Data from the National Injury Surveillance System, from 2006 to 2013 were used to analyze the trend of self-inflicted injury/suicide proportion in injuries as well as the socio-demographic characteristics of the cases with related basic and clinic information related to self-inflicted injury/suicide.
RESULTS: The proportion of self-inflicted injury/suicide cases decreased during the past 8 years. 58.6% of the self-inflicted injury/suicide cases were females in 2013 and 42.1% received junior secondary school education. Self-inflicted injury/suicide were mostly taken place at home (76.2% ). Poisoning (56.1% ) and sharp injury were the major ways causing self-inflicted injury or suicide.
CONCLUSION: Interventions on self-inflicted injury/suicide should be strengthened including control programs on pesticide/psychotropic drugs. Prevention on future attempts and suicide should include the full use during the in-hospital time of those suicide attempters.