The Oxford Monitoring System for Self-harm
The Monitoring System was established in 1976. It enables information to be collected on patients presenting to the general hospital in Oxford (covering a population of approximately 460,000) following self-harm, whether or not admitted to a hospital bed and whether or not assessed by the psychiatric service. This recording system is the longest-standing in the UK. For each patient, information is collected on a range of socio-demographic and clinical variables, most of which are relevant to suicide risk and repetition of self-harm. The database currently includes information on over 47,000 episodes of self-harm carried out by almost over 27,000 individuals. Episodes and persons are linked so that it is easy to examine repetition of self-harm over varying time periods. The database is linked to recording of deaths that occur in England and Wales, so that risk of death from any cause following self-harm can be investigated.
If you would like more information about the Oxford Monitoring System, including how we collect data and what we do with the information, please see our Frequently Asked Questions, Patient Information leaflet and the Privacy Notice for this project (links on left of this page).
The Centre for Suicide Research co-ordinates a national collaboration of research centres which collect data on self-harm as part of the Multicentre Study of Self-Harm in England.
The Oxford Monitoring System is sponsored by Oxford Health NHS Foundation Trust.
Previous publications arising from the Oxford data:
Haw, C., Casey, D., Holmes, J., & Hawton, K. (2015). Suicidal intent and method of self‐harm: A large‐scale study of self‐harm patients presenting to a general hospital. Suicide and Life-Threatening Behavior. doi: 10.1111/sltb.12168
Hawton, K. Haw, C. Casey, D., Bale, L., Brand, F., & Rutherford, D. (2015). Self-harm in Oxford, England: Epidemiological and clinical trends, 1996-2010. Social Psychiatry and Psychiatric Epidemiology, 50(5), 695-704. doi: 10.1007/s00127-014-0990-1
Hiles, S., Bergen, H., Hawton, K., Lewin, T., Whyte, I., & Carter, G. (2015). General Hospital-treated self-poisoning in England and Australia: Comparison of presentation rates, clinical characteristics and aftercare based on sentinel unit data. Journal of Psychosomatic Research.
Meyer, N., Voysey, M., Holmes, J., Casey, D. and Hawton, K. (2014) Self-harm in people with epilepsy: A retrospective cohort study. Epilepsia, 55, 1-11. Doi: 10.1111/epi.12723
Saunders, K., Brand, F., Lascelles, K., & Hawton, K. (2014) The sad truth about the SADPERSONS Scale: an evaluation of its clinical utility in self-harm patients. Emergency Medicine Journal 10: 796-8
Hawton, K., Bergen, H., Mahadevan, S., Casey, D., Simkin, S. (2012) Suicide and deliberate self-harm in Oxford University students over a 30-year period Social Psychiatry and Psychiatric Epidemiology, 47, 43-51