ArticleActa psychiatrica Scandinavica2022
Autism and self-harm: A population-based and discordant sibling study of young individuals.
Article in Acta psychiatrica Scandinavica, 2022. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 9 papers.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
9 citing papers in PubMed, 16 citations in OpenAlex.
- It Doesn't Look Like Work, but it Works: A Qualitative Study of Staff Experiences with a Self-Harm Strategy in Danish Inpatient Mental Health Services.Administration and policy in mental health · 2026Article
- Defining Nonsuicidal Self-Injury in Autistic People: A Framework for Assessment Using Key Elements to Aid in Characterization.Autism in adulthood · 2026Article
- Correlates of Deliberate Self-Harm in Youth With Autism and/or Intellectual Disability.JAACAP open · 2025Article
- The application of population data linkage to capture sibling health outcomes among children and young adults with neurodevelopmental conditions. A scoping review.International journal of population data science · 2025Article
- Aberrant glutamatergic systems underlying impulsive behaviors: Insights from clinical and preclinical research.Progress in neuro-psychopharmacology & biological psychiatry · 2024Review
- [Differences in self-harm among adolescents and young adults with autism spectrum disorder: a gender-based approach].Revista de neurologia · 2024Article
- Self-Harm Events and Suicide Deaths Among Autistic Individuals in Ontario, Canada.JAMA network open · 2023Article
- Differential Diagnosis of ICD-11 Personality Disorder and Autism Spectrum Disorder in Adolescents.Children (Basel, Switzerland) · 2023Article
- Autism and self-harm: A population-based and discordant sibling study of young individuals.Acta psychiatrica Scandinavica · 2022Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
7 authors at 4 institutions in 2 countries.
Funding
Abstract
objectiveSelf-harm among young autistic individuals is a clinical challenge, and the risk of premature death by suicide is strongly increased in this group. Using the advantage of total-population and family-based data, we investigated whether autism per se is a risk factor for self-harm independently of psychiatric comorbidities and how it differs from self-harm in non-autistic individuals.
methodsWe used The Stockholm Youth Cohort, a total-population register study, including all residents in Stockholm County aged 0-17 years between 2001 and 2011.Study participants were followed from age 10 to 27 for hospital admissions because of self-harm. We used modified Poisson regression to calculate relative risks (RR) using robust standard error to derive 95% confidence intervals (CI).
resultsIn all, 410,732 individuals were included in the cohort (9,070 with a diagnosis of autism). Autistic individuals had a fivefold increased adjusted relative risk of self-harm (RR 5.0 [95% CI 4.4-5.6]). The risk increase was more pronounced for autism without intellectual disability and particularly high for self-cutting 10.2 [7.1-14.7] and more violent methods 8.9 [5.2-15.4]. The association between autism and self-harm was independent of, but clearly exacerbated by comorbid psychiatric conditions. It was of similar magnitude as risks linked to these conditions per se, and not explained by shared familial factors.
conclusionSelf-harm severe enough to present to medical services is as common in autistic youth as in those with depression or ADHD. Potentially more lethal methods are more likely to be used of autistic self-harmers.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.