Differences between suicide and non-suicidal self-harm behaviours: a literary review.

Abstract

SummaryThe World Health Organization (WHO) states that suicide is one of the 20 most common causes of death -almost 1 million people across the globe die by suicide every year (data from 21 July 2014) [1]. Suicide is one of the most common causes of death among teenagers [2,3]. Another significant but much less known phenomenon is non-suicidal self-injury (self-harm). Despite the fact that we know much less about self-harm than about suicide, research during the past 10 years has indicated that self-harm occurs more frequently in the population of adolescents -whereas suicides affect 10% of teenagers, 7-14% of young people report to have performed a self-harming act at least once in their lives [4]. The most recent international research shows that the frequency of self-destructive behaviours in adolescents is at the level of 24% of the whole population, which might indicate an intensification of this phenomenon [5]. In some cases self-injury takes place with a clear intention of committing an act of suicide, or it can be a self-destructive act which often precedes a suicidal attempt, sometimes long before the final decision to carry it out. Nevertheless, in the majority of cases self-injuary is not performed with the intention of death. Therefore, the following question might be posed: do self-harm acts constitute a separate category of behaviours, or do they inevitably lead to suicidal death? When answering, we ought to take a closer look at both phenomena to have a better understanding of their aetiology, risk factors and frequency, and to understand when they co-occur and when they belong to different categories of self-aggressive behaviours. suicide / non-suicidal self-injury / auto-aggression

Externalizing the threat from within: A new direction for researching associations between suicide and psychotic experiences

“…Second, self-injurious and suicidal behavior were aggregated to reflect overall internal threat in the current study. These behaviors have, however, been shown to be distinct from one another (Halicka & Kiejna, 2015) and should be tested separately in future studies where larger/older sample data and higher prevalence rates facilitate such analyses. Third, SIB at 12 years was informed by parental report while PEs at this age were derived from child self-reports.…”

Predictors and correlates of lifetime and persistent non-suicidal self-injury and suicide attempts among adult survivors of childhood sexual abuse

“…To better understand these individual differences, studies are needed examining the role of risk and protective factors of NSSI and SA, both generally and pertaining to childhood maltreatment specifically (Halicka & Kiejna, 2015 ; Serafini et al, 2017 ). Despite decades of research and recent developments in predictive algorithms, SA are still difficult to predict (Belsher et al, 2019 ; Franklin et al, 2017 ).…”

Explicit and Implicit Hopelessness and Self‐injury

“…Table 2 illustrates the levels of self‐injurious behavior. While there is substantial overlap between all of the different aspects of self‐injury measured here, prior research has demonstrated important differences between self‐harming and suicidal behavior in the associated risk factors (Brausch & Gutierrez, 2010; Muehlenkamp & Gutierrez, 2004), prevalence rates (Nock et al, 2008; Swannell et al, 2014) and mortality levels (Halicka & Kiejna, 2015). Past research has also established key sociodemographic and clinical differences between suicide ideators and suicide attempters (May & Klonsky, 2016).…”