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A cross-sectional epidemiological study of non-suicidal self-injury prevalence in Chinese psychiatric patients

Nature Mental Health volume 1, pages 266–272 (2023)Cite this article

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Abstract

Non-suicidal self-injury (NSSI) is a common behaviour among psychiatric patients that is easily overlooked and often brings serious consequences. The current literature is limited to certain groups and uses different diagnostic criteria. Here our aim was to investigate the prevalence of NSSI in psychiatric patients in China. Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, fifth edition diagnostic criteria were used to conduct a 2-week cross-sectional survey of all psychiatric patients presenting to 15 hospitals in 14 cities across 8 provinces in China during this period. A total of 3,298 psychiatric patients were included. The highest prevalence of NSSI behaviour was found in adolescents aged 10–19 years (14.3%). The prevalence of NSSI behaviour in females in outpatients (16.9%) and inpatients of child and adolescent psychiatric departments (19.6%), outpatients (5.9%) and inpatients adult psychiatric departments (7.7%) was significantly higher than in males. The prevalence of NSSI behaviour in patients with personality disorders was significantly higher than in any other diagnostic group (46.7%, χ2 = 195.239, P < 0.000). The prevalence of NSSI in psychiatric patients is high, especially in adolescents. Therefore, it is necessary to inform patients and medical workers to effectively treat and manage NSSI.

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Fig. 1: Distribution of patients with and without NSSI diagnosis in total population.

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Data availability

The data sets generated and/or analysed during the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request. The participants did not consent to the sharing of the raw data to the public. Source data are provided with this study. The databases used in this study include: https://www.cnki.net, https://www.wanfangdata.com.cn, https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov and https://www.webofscience.com.

Code availability

All code is available at https://www.ibm.com/docs/en/spss-statistics/25.0.0.

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Acknowledgements

This study was supported by Jiangsu Provincial key research and development programme (BE2019609), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (81971289 and 81871344), the Natural Science Foundation of Jiangsu Province (BK20191369) and the Qing Lan Project of the Higher Educations of Jiangsu Province. We thank all the participants for their time and dedication, and B. Zhong for help with the revision of the paper.

Author information

Author notes

  1. These authors contributed equally: Pei Zhang, Lichen Ouyang.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. The Affiliated Brain Hospital of Nanjing Medical University, Nanjing, China

    Pei Zhang, Lichen Ouyang, Minlu Liang, Yun Wu, Chenxi Bao & Chun Wang

  2. The Third Hospital of Mianyang, Mianyang, China

    Kun Yang

  3. Xuzhou Oriental People’s Hospital, Xuzhou, China

    Yuan Liu

  4. Tianjin Anding Hospital, Tianjin, China

    Jing Long

  5. The Fifth Affiliated Hospital of Sun Yat-sen University, Zhuhai, China

    Xianglan Wang

  6. Brain Hospital of Hunan Province, The Second People’s Hospital of Hunan Province, Changsha, China

    Guangya Liu

  7. Gansu Gem Flower Hospital, Lanzhou, China

    Xiaomei Jiang

  8. Shaanxi Provincial People’s Hospital, Xi’an, China

    Yan Sun

  9. Suzhou Wujiang Mental Rehabilitation Hospital, Suzhou, China

    Hua Lv

  10. Mental Health Center of Xi’an City, Xi’an, China

    Xianliang Wu

  11. The First People’s Hospital of Changzhou, Changzhou, China

    Suhong Wang

  12. The 904th Hospital of the People’s Liberation Army, Wuxi, China

    Guangyao Li

  13. Zhenjiang Mental Health Center, Zhenjiang, China

    Bei Zhao

  14. West China Hospital of Sichuan University, Chengdu, China

    Yang Liu

  15. The Department of Mental Health, The First Affiliated Hospital, College of Medicine, Zhejiang University, Zhejiang, China

    Jianbo Hu

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  1. Pei Zhang
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Contributions

Data curation and formal analysis were carried out by P.Z. L.O. wrote the original draft. M.L., Y.W., C.B., K.Y., Yuan Liu, J.L., X. Wang, G. Liu, X.J., Y.S., H.L., X. Wu, S.W., G. Li, B.Z., Yang Liu and J.H. carried out data collection. C.W. reviewed, edited and critically revised the paper. All authors read and approved the final paper.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Chun Wang.

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The authors declare no competing interests.

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Nature Mental Health thanks Rebecca Babcock Fenerci and the other, anonymous, reviewer(s) for their contribution to the peer review of this work.

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Data sharing The data analysed during the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.

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Zhang, P., Ouyang, L., Liang, M. et al. A cross-sectional epidemiological study of non-suicidal self-injury prevalence in Chinese psychiatric patients. Nat. Mental Health 1, 266–272 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1038/s44220-023-00050-y

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