Citation

Kocalevent RD, Fliege H, Rose M, Walter M, Danzer G, Klapp BF. Psychother. Psychosom. 2005; 74(4): 202-211.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2005, Karger Publishers)

DOI

10.1159/000085143

PMID

15947509

Abstract

BACKGROUND: The phenomenon 'autodestructive behaviour' is becoming an increasingly serious disease and cost factor in a wide range of medical fields. The present paper presents a survey of the literature on autodestructive behaviour, excluding psychotic, substance-induced or organic brain disorders. Starting out with a conceptual overview, the paper goes on to look into the epidemiology of autodestructive behaviour and the forms in which it manifests itself.
METHOD: A literature search was conducted in Medline, Psycinfo and Psyndex using the search terms 'artifact', 'artificially induced', 'autodestructive', 'self-mutilation', 'factitious', 'self-harm', 'self-induced', 'self-inflicted', 'self-injuring' and 'self-mutilation' for the period from 1977 to 2003.
RESULTS: Five of a total of 18 empirical studies describe the simultaneous occurrence of direct and indirect forms of autodestructive behaviour. Reported prevalence rates range from 0.032% to 9.36%. The ratio of females to males was found to be 2:1 (average age: 31.5 years; SD: 9.3 years); in contrast, the gender ratio was reversed for Munchausen's syndrome. The case history data presented are patchy and differ in terms of their priorities. We found a large number of codiagnoses, which seems to indicate that personality and dependence disorders, or substance misuse, are characteristic of both direct and indirect forms of autodestructive behaviour.
CONCLUSIONS: The task at hand is to use a yet-to-be-developed nomenclature and adequately operational diagnostic criteria to work out standardised survey instruments that do justice to the heterogeneity of this disorder complex.

Language: en

Keywords

Comorbidity; Factitious Disorders; Humans; Practice Guidelines as Topic; Prevalence; Self-Injurious Behavior; Syndrome; Terminology as Topic