Examining the Certain Behaviors and Characteristics
Seen in Suicidal and Self-Harm Psychiatric Ward Patients
Lacey L. Beatty
Hagerstown Community College

Abstract
Gaining insight in the certain behaviors and characteristics that precipitate attempted suicide and self-harm in psychiatric patients is the goal of this study. This study used 522 consenting psychiatric patients during the first two weeks of their admission to collect data on their own personal conflicts and containments. The patients were enlisted voluntarily from 84 different psychiatric wards in randomly selected London hospitals. These researchers followed each incident of self-harm or suicide attempt over a 24-hour period, through the morning, afternoon, and …show more content…
The sample population included as stated above different ages, genders, and races and was collected during the first two weeks of admission. “Patients were eligible to participate if they were inpatients of the selected acute wards, were 18-65 years old, had stayed in hospital for two weeks or more, were present on the ward when the survey was conducted, were safe enough to be approached as judged by the ward staff and gave informed consent to take part in the study” (Stewart et al., 2011, p. 1006). The nursing staff helped to identify eligible patients and once these patients gave informed consent, the researcher completed the Patient-Staff Conflict Checklist (PCC), which is a device used to record the number of conflicts and containments during each shift; this information was then entered into a computer (Stewart et al., …show more content…
In this particular case, there was a wide variety of hospitals used as well as the actual number of individuals observed. “Among the sample of 522 inpatients, there were a total of 125 self-harm incidents and 40 suicide attempts during the first two weeks of admission” (Stewart et al., 2011, p. 1006). There was also a case where 13 of the 522 patients had both self-harmed and attempted suicide (Stewart et al., 2011). A higher proportion of self-harm events were seen to occur more during afternoon shifts than morning or night shifts (Stewart et al., 2011). “Verbal aggression and aggression to objects were the most frequent conflict behaviors recorded before a self-harm incident and occurred in approximately equal proportions” (Stewart et al., 2011, p. 1006). Absconding and attempting to abscond were noted as immediate precursors to an incident (Stewart et al., 2011). The researchers seemed to agree that this study has been helpful in early intervention, but the use of PRN medications, de-escalation techniques and special observation were not always successful (Stewart et al.,