Clinico-epidemiological characteristics of self-inflicted injuries at tertiary care hospital in Barabanki 

Background: Self-inflicted injury is an intentional and direct injury to one's own's body part without any suicidal motive.Adult males are the main victims in the majority of the cases.The incidence of self-harm is increasing throughout the world and the main reasons for its rise are pressure from society, overuse of social platforms, which increases the gap between parents and their children.Materials and Methods: This retrospective study includes two-year data from January 2021 to December 2022.Inclusion criteria include the patients who came into the emergency department with self-inflicted injuries.A total of 58 patients were enrolled in the study.Results: In this study, 22% of subjects were female and 78% were male, 79% were unmarried and 21% were married.Parents' education of most of the patients was below the metric (65.51%).18 cases (31%) belonged to parents having low socioeconomic status, 23 cases (39.65%) belonged to medium socioeconomic status and 17 cases (29.3%) belonged to higher socioeconomic status.Most of the patients belonged to nuclear families.The most preferred location of selfharm was the left wrist.The blade was the most common weapon used to cause self-inflicted injury, followed by a knife.The most common risk factors associated with such injuries were psychiatric illness and matter of love affairs.The most common psychiatric illness was anxiety disorder followed by depression.Conclusions: Various ignored issues which play a significant role in acquiring self-inflicted injury, such as the low academic status of parents, the low-tomedium socioeconomic status of parents and nuclear family must be taken into consideration.Rejection in love affairs and psychiatric illness are the most common precipitating factors.Regular follow-up and psychiatric evaluation may be beneficial for limiting self-inflicted injury in the future.