MétaCan
Menu
Back to cohort
Record W4409870084 · doi:10.1186/s12888-025-06877-2

Self-harming behaviors among forensic psychiatric patients who committed violent offences: an exploratory study on the role of circumstances during the index offence and victim characteristics

2025· article· en· W4409870084 on OpenAlexafffundabout
Mark Mohan Kaggwa, Arianna Davids, Heather M. Moulden, Gary Chaimowitz, Parwiz Mohibi, Bailea Erb, Andrew T Olagunju

Bibliographic record

VenueBMC Psychiatry · 2025
Typearticle
Languageen
FieldPsychology
TopicSuicide and Self-Harm Studies
Canadian institutionsUniversity of WaterlooMcMaster UniversitySt. Joseph’s Healthcare Hamilton
FundersMcMaster University
KeywordsShameHarmPsychologyPsychiatryFeelingForensic scienceAffect (linguistics)Clinical psychologyAssociation (psychology)Exploratory researchInjury preventionPoison controlMedicineSocial psychologyMedical emergency

Abstract

fetched live from OpenAlex

BACKGROUND: Self-harming behaviors are common among forensic patients with violent index offenses. While various factors, including feelings of shame and guilt, may influence self-harming behaviors, little is known about how the circumstances surrounding the index offense and the victims' characteristics affect self-harming tendencies among forensic patients. In this study, we examined the association of the circumstances surrounding the index offence and victim characteristics with self-harming behaviors among forensic patients who have committed violent offences. METHODS: The present study consisted of 845 forensic psychiatric patients under the Ontario Review Board who had violent offences (Mean age = 42.13 ± 13.29; 85.68% male) in the reporting year 2014/15. The study examined the association between self-harming incidents with the circumstances during the index offense and victims' characteristics while controlling for clinical and demographic factors based on multiple hierarchical negative binominal regression. RESULTS: The prevalence of self-harm was 4.14%, and more than half (61.29%) of the patients with self-harming behaviors had multiple incidents. The total number of self-harming incidences recorded in the reporting year was 113. The results showed that of the overall 24.05% explained by the models, the victim's characteristics contributed approximately 5% points, and circumstances during the index offence contributed an additional 2% points in explaining self-harming behaviors among forensic psychiatric patients during the reporting year. In the final model, the risk of self-harm increased with having a victim who was a healthcare/support staff or a co-patient/cohabitant. CONCLUSION: Self-harm among forensic patients who committed violent offences is associated with various factors, including previous history of self-harm and the victim's characteristics, especially when the victim was a healthcare/support worker or co-patient. These findings suggest that self-harm might be a maladaptive way of coping with negative emotions, such as feelings of guilt and shame triggered by harming others. Mitigating measures for self-harm among patients with violent offences need to be robust and individualized, taking into consideration vulnerability issues and the best available evidence.

Fetched live from OpenAlex and de-inverted. Abstracts are not stored in this database: the inverted indexes are 8.6 GB of the frame’s 9.3 GB of text, and the host has 13 GB free.

How this classification was reachedexpand

Full frame machine prediction

Teacher imitation

Not calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.

metaresearch head score (Codex)0.001
metaresearch head score (Gemma)0.003
Version: metacan-v3-hybrid-931329e0061cValidation status: machine_predicted_unvalidated
Candidate categoriesnone
Consensus categoriesnone
DomainCandidate signal: none · Consensus signal: none
Study designCandidate signal: Observational · Consensus signal: Observational
GenreCandidate signal: Empirical · Consensus signal: Empirical
Teacher disagreement score0.008
Threshold uncertainty score0.015

Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)

CategoryCodexGemma
Metaresearch0.0010.003
Meta-epidemiology (narrow)0.0000.000
Meta-epidemiology (broad)0.0000.000
Bibliometrics0.0010.001
Science and technology studies0.0010.000
Scholarly communication0.0010.001
Open science0.0000.001
Research integrity0.0000.001
Insufficient payload (model declined to judge)0.0010.000

Machine scores (provisional)

The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.

Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.

Opus teacher head0.013
GPT teacher head0.268
Teacher spread0.255 · how far apart the two teachers sit on this one work
Validation statusscore_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from it

Classification

machine, unvalidated

Machine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.

The models applied no category: nothing in the taxonomy fit this work.
Study designObservational
Domainnot available
GenreEmpirical

How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".

Quick stats

Citations2
Published2025
Admission routes3
Has abstractyes

Explore more

Same venueBMC PsychiatrySame topicSuicide and Self-Harm StudiesFrench-language works237,207