New guidance for longer-term management of self-harm issued

The healthcare guidance body NICE has today published a new clinical guideline on the longer-term care of adults, children and young people who self-harm. The guideline development group was chaired by Professor Navneet Kapur in The University of Manchester's Centre for Suicide Prevention. This new guideline follows on from the NICE guideline on the short-term physical and psychological management and secondary prevention of self-harm in primary and secondary care (NICE clinical guideline 16). The new recommendations focus on the longer-term psychological treatment and management of self-harm. Fergus Macbeth, Director of the Centre for Clinical Practice at NICE, said: "Self-harm is a very broad term for a behaviour that can be expressed by those affected in very individual ways, which is why it is so important that each person receives the right care plan for them. The previous NICE guideline on the short-term treatment of self-harm focused on the first 48 hours of an episode and the care they received in the Emergency Department. This new guideline aims to help healthcare professionals support, in the longer term, people who are known to self-harm in reducing and then stopping the behaviour.