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Prison institutional conditions affect risk for self-harm among detainees. In particular, prison overcrowding may increase the likelihood of self-harm by creating competition for resources, space, and enhancing a “deprivation state.” The purpose of this paper is to examine the association between overcrowding and prisoner acts of self-harm.

This cross-sectional study took place at Geneva’s pre-trial prison (capacity:376) between 2006 and 2014. Outcomes were acts of self-harm that required medical attention, and self-strangulation/hanging events (combined into one group, as these are difficult to differentiate). Dichotomous predictors were overcrowding index- annual mean daily population divided by capacity ( > 200 percent vs < 200 percent), and year group (2006-2009 vs 2011-2014).

Self-harm and self-strangulations/hangings increased in 2011-2014 compared to 2006-2010 (p < 0.001). Overcrowding in excess of 200 percent was associated with self-strangulation/hangings (p < 0.001) but not with all self-harm events. In terms of pertinent demographics that would affect self-harm, there was no prison change in gender, area of origin, foreign residency, religion, or psychiatric treatment.

The present study is limited by the definition and identification of self-harm. The distinction between self-strangulation and self-hanging, and the precise classification of an intent to die is difficult to make in practice, especially with limited prison data records available. The relevant literature addresses the complexity of the association between non-suicidal and suicidal behavior. Despite this, the combined category self-strangulations/hangings gives some indication of severe self-harm events, especially since the methodology of categorization employed was consistent throughout the entire period of the study. Other limitations include the small sample size and the lack of individual patient data and prison data to help control for confounding factors. Despite these drawbacks, pertinent data (socio-demographics and number of prisoners treated for mental health and drug abuse) remained stable over the years. Thus, there are no apparent changes in the inmate population that could be linked to an increase in self-harm. High-security placements and mean prisoner stay have increased over time, with a decrease in staff to prisoner ratio – and these must be looked into further as contributors. Additionally, qualitative methods such as semi-structured interviews and focus groups could delineate the impact of overcrowding on prisoner well-being and self-harm potential.

The authors observed a significant increase in self-harm and self-strangulation/hangings over time, and overcrowding was significantly associated with self-strangulation/hangings (but not with all self-harm events). Overcrowding can impose destructive effects on the psychological and behavioral well being of inmates in prison, influencing a myriad of emotional and livelihood factors that predispose to harmful behavior.

This report should alert public health and prison authorities to this issue, and garner resources to address such an alarming rise. The findings from this short report demonstrate the need for a further examination of the mechanisms affecting self-harm among prisoners in this population, particularly the relationship between self-strangulations/hangings and overcrowding.

The No Harm Done films provide hope and give support to those affected by self-harm. The accompanying digital packs dispel myths, answer frequently asked questions, provide practical advice and signpost to further help and support. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

YoungMinds employed its sector-leading expertise in youth and parent engagement. Both the films and digital packs were co-created with young people, parents and professionals, reflecting their real-life experiences of self-harm.

The project responded to young people who self-harm telling us they feel isolated, alone, in need of hope and help to counteract the negative and frightening messages widely available online. Parents confided they also feel isolated and that it is their fault their child is harming themselves. Teachers told us they see the signs but cannot bring themselves to say anything, and even if they want to, they cannot find the words to reach out to young people.

Quote from a professional “I personally found the No Harm Done short films to be incredibly valuable resources for my practice with young people. The way the films have been produced will make it a lot harder for young people that I work with to judge the action of self-harm given that there are no graphic harming words/stories and the films themselves do not come across as triggering. I feel enthusiastic that these films will encourage understanding and empathy from peers and spark conversation enabling those who have no knowledge around self-harm to be more accepting, open and supportive of those who have issues with self-harm.”

Previous research has established that guidelines to facilitate a non‐judgemental, consistent approach to self‐harm management would be useful to staff working in a forensic psychiatric setting. In the preparation of these guidelines, a literature search was conducted to examine the evidence on clinical effectiveness for managing self‐harm. Overall, the evidence for defining a definitive treatment approach to self‐harm is extremely limited. However, a number of studies/reviews have identified aspects of treatment and care that are considered to be effective. Guidelines have been produced that capitalise on this information and provide front‐line staff (such as nurses) with advice that can be used on a daily basis when working with a service user who self‐harms.

Identified risk factors and clinical experience suggest that self‐harm is a common and very significant problem in forensic psychiatric settings. Sparse training on self‐harm given to staff throughout professional development is a concern for staff who can be left feeling dissatisfied and powerless as how to manage the patient who self‐harms. Consequently, staff often have to rely on idiosyncratic beliefs about self‐harm and its management to guide their practice. This survey investigated staff attitudes towards self‐harm in a forensic psychiatric service. The results highlight much variation in attitudes and a sub‐population of staff holding relatively more punitive/negative beliefs. In addition, the survey drew attention to the difficulty of managing self‐harm in forensic settings‐especially in relation to issues around facilitating safe self‐harm.

High rates of suicide and self-harm are reported in prisons in Western countries, while fewer studies exist from a non-Western context. This study aims to identify rates of suicide, non-fatal suicide attempts and self-harm in Moroccan prisons and to better understand the context, methods, tools, predictors and profile of persons engaged in the acts.

The authors report findings from a mixed-methods study carried out before an intervention project. The study consists of a systematic literature review, an analysis of suicide case files, a quantitative survey on suicide attempts and self-harm, as well as interviews and focus group discussions. The authors calculate suicide, suicide attempt and self-harm rates and present descriptive data on the incidents. The authors use regression models to explore the association between the number of incidents per individual and selected predictors, adjusting for clustering by institution.

Over a four-year period, 29 detained persons in Morocco died by suicide (average annual suicide rate 8.7 per 100,000). Most were men under the age of 30. Hanging accounted for all but one case. In one year, 230 suicide attempts were reported. Over a three-months period, 110 self-harm cases were reported from 18 institutions, cutting being the most common method. Self-harm was significantly more prevalent among persons with a life sentence or repeated incarcerations.

To make the study manageable as part of an intervention project, the authors collected data on suicides and suicide attempts from all prisons, while data on self-harm were collected from fewer prisons and over a shorter time period. The authors did not collect comparable information from detained persons who did not die by suicide, attempt suicide or self-harm. This prevented comparative analyses. Further, it is possible that self-harm cases were not reported if they did not result in serious physical injury. Data were collected by prison staff; thus, the voice of incarcerated persons is absent.

This study provided a solid basis for designing an intervention project including the development of a national prison policy and guidelines on suicides, suicide attempts and self-harm and a country-wide training program for prison staff. It also led to a better surveillance system, allowing for trend analysis and better-informed policymaking. The qualitative results helped create an understanding of how staff may trivialize self-harm. This was integrated into the training package for staff, resulting in the creation of prison staff trainers who became the strongest advocates against the notion that self-harm was best ignored.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first published data on suicide and self-harm in Moroccan prisons. It underscores the necessity for the intervention project and gives valuable insights into suicide and self-harm in a non-Western prison context. Further research is needed to assess whether the findings are typical of the region.

This article explores how companies in multiple controversial industries report their controversial issues. For the first time, the authors use a new conceptualization of controversial industries, focused on harm and solutions, to investigate the reports of 28 companies in seven controversial industries: Agricultural Chemicals, Alcohol, Armaments, Coal, Gambling, Oil and Tobacco.

The authors thematically analyzed company reports to determine if companies in controversial industries discuss their controversial issues in their reporting, if and how they communicate the harm caused by their products or services, and what solutions they provide.

From this study data the authors introduce a new legitimacy reporting method in the controversial industries literature: the solutions companies offer for the harm caused by their products and services. The authors find three solution reporting methods: no solution, misleading solution and less-harmful solution. The authors also develop a new typology of reporting strategies used by companies in controversial industries based on how they report their key controversial issue and the harm caused by their products or services, and the solutions they offer. The authors identify seven reporting strategies: Ignore, Deny, Decoy, Dazzle, Distort, Deflect and Adapt.

Further research can test the typology and identify strategies used by companies in different institutional or regulatory settings, across different controversial industries or in larger populations.

Investors, consumers, managers, activists and other stakeholders of controversial companies can use this typology to identify the strategies that companies use to report controversial issues. They can assess if reports admit to the controversial issue and the harm caused by a company's products and services and if they provide solutions to that harm.

This paper develops a new typology of reporting strategies by companies in controversial industries and adds to the theory and discourse on social and environmental reporting (SER) as well as the literature on controversial industries.

A growing body of literature focuses on crime hotspots; however, less is known about the spatial distribution of crime at mass transit systems, and even less is known about trajectory patterns of hotspots in non-English-speaking countries.

The spatiotemporal behaviour of 1,494 crimes reported to the Hong Kong’s Railway Police District across a two-year period was examined in this study. Crime harm weights were then applied to offences to estimate the distribution of crime severity across the transit system. Descriptive statistics are used to understand the temporal and spatial trends, and k-means longitudinal clustering are used to examine the developmental trajectories of crime in train stations over time.

Analyses suggest that 15.2% and 8.8% of stations accounted for 50% of all counted crime and crime harm scores, respectively, indicating the predictability of crime and harm to occur at certain stations but not others. Offending persists consistently, with low, moderate and high counts and harm stations remaining the same over time.

These findings suggest that more localised crime control initiatives are required to target crime effectively.

This is one of the only studies focusing on hotspots and harmspots in the mass transit system.

The current review aims to focus on how risk and protective factors for self-harm in secure mental health hospitals are captured in the literature.

Fifty-seven articles were included in a systematic review, drawn from an initial 1,119 articles, post duplicate removal. Databases included Psycinfo, Psycarticles, Psycnet, Web of Science and EBSCO host. A thematic analysis was used, which included a meta-ethnographic approach for considering qualitative papers.

There was a clear focus on risk factors, with eight identified (in order of occurrence): raised emotional reactivity and poor emotion regulation; poor mental health; traumatic experiences; personality disorder diagnosis and associated traits; increased use of outward aggression – dual harm; constraints of a secure environment and lack of control; previous self-harm and suicide attempts; and hopelessness. Protective factors featured less, resulting in only three themes emerging (in order of occurrence): positive social support and communication; positive coping skills; and hope/positive outlook.

This includes a proposal to move focus away from “risk” factors, to incorporate “needs”, in terms of individual and environmental factors. There is also a need for more attention to focus on developing high quality research in this area.

The research captures an area where a synthesis of research has not been comprehensively undertaken, particularly with regards to capturing protective as well as risk factors.

Based on the conservation of resources theory, this study aims to investigate if the fear of career harm influences employees’ knowledge-hoarding behavior. The study further examines felt violation as the predictor of employees’ fear of career harm. The study also explores leader-member exchange as a boundary factor influencing the effect of felt violation on employees’ fear of career harm.

The data were collected in three waves from 402 professionals working in the information technology industry in Bengaluru, popularly known as the Silicon Valley of India.

The findings indicate fear of career harm as a critical predictor of employees’ knowledge-hoarding behavior. Moreover, felt violation indirectly impacts knowledge-hoarding behavior by enhancing employees’ fear of career harm. The adverse effect of felt violation was found to be stronger for employees with poor-quality relationships with their leaders.

The study carries important managerial implications as it uncovers the antecedents of knowledge hoarding. First, the human resource department can devise specific guidelines to ensure that the employees are treated the way they were promised. They can also organize training opportunities and mentoring so that the employees’ performance and growth do not get hampered, even if there is a violation. Moreover, such cases should be addressed in an adequate and expedited manner. More significantly, leaders can compensate for the failure of organizational-level levers by developing quality relationships with their subordinates.

The study advances the existing literature on knowledge hoarding by establishing a novel antecedent. Furthermore, it identifies how the employee-leader relationship’s quality can mitigate the adverse effect of felt violation.

This article aims to analyze the incorporation of harm reduction health workers with lived experience in all services focused on the care for drug users in Belo Horizonte’s mental health network, one of the largest Brazilian Psychosocial Care Networks (Rede de Atenção Psicossocial [RAPS]), and reports the findings of a qualitative study on the life stories, recovery journeys and the professional practice of harm reducers in Belo Horizonte.

For the development of this research, the authors chose the following methodological tools: documentary research; follow-up of harm reduction interventions; access to harm reducers’ field diaries; joint writing of the life stories of the harm reducers.

It indicates that these professionals, as harm reducers empowered by their life experience, have developed various elements and active ingredients of peer support. Their practices and the results of their actions have consolidated their inclusion as Belo Horizonte RAPS’ health workers and highlight that recovery-oriented care and peer support are a real possibility in Brazil.

In this research, harm reducers are coauthors and report their own life experience. In this article, they also talk about the impact of this experience on their work and on the lives of users of mental health services, emphasizing the protagonism and exercise of citizenship by harm reducers.