Few Seniors Who Self-Harm Referred for Mental Health Care

A study published in The Lancet Psychiatry found most older adults who self-harm are not being referred to mental health services, reports HealthDay News . The researchers identified 4,124 adults 65 and older with a self-harm episode ascertained from Read codes recorded from 2001 to 2014. In that period, the overall incidence of self-harm was 4.1 per 10,000 person-years, with stable gender-specific rates. Generally, 11.7 percent of the 2,854 adults were referred to mental health services following self-harm, with 59.3 percent and 11.8 percent prescribed an antidepressant and a tricyclic antidepressant, respectively. Relative to the comparison cohort, the prevalence of having previously diagnosed mental illness or a previous physical health condition was greater in the self-harm group. In the first year, adults from the self-harm cohort died from unnatural causes an estimated 20 times more frequently than those in the comparison cohort, while the self-harm cohort also were far more likely to die of suicide.