Citation

Leung Kwok C, Yip PSF. Crisis 2018; 39(3): 205-217.

Affiliation

Department of Social Work and Social Administration, the University of Hong Kong, PRC.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2018, International Association for Suicide Prevention, Publisher Hogrefe Publishing)

DOI

10.1027/0227-5910/a000494

PMID

29216754

Abstract

BACKGROUND: A surveillance system for self-harm has not been established in Hong Kong. The existing data source has an unknown degree of underreporting, and therefore a capture-recapture method has been proposed to correct for the incompleteness. AIMS: To assess the underestimation of the incidence of self-harm cases presenting to hospital in Hong Kong using a capture and recapture method.

METHOD: Two different yet overlapping hospital administrative datasets of self-harm were obtained from all public hospitals in Hong Kong. From 2002 to 2011, 59,473 distinct episodes involving 36,411 patients were identified. A capture-recapture model considering heterogeneous capture probabilities was applied to estimate the number of self-harm episodes.

RESULTS: The estimated number of self-harm incidence was 79,923, equally shared by females and males. Cases of self-harm by females were more likely to be ascertained than those by males. The estimated annual incidence rate of self-harm in Hong Kong from 2002 to 2011 ranged from 96.4 in 2010 to 132.7 in 2002. LIMITATIONS: The proposed method does not include patients who required no medical attention and those where the patient consulted private doctors.

CONCLUSION: The capture-recapture model is a useful method for adjusting the underestimation of self-harm cases from existing databases when surveillance system is not available and to reveal some hidden patterns.

Language: en

Keywords

Hong Kong; capture–recapture; incidence rate; self-harm