A study of sleep quality and quality of life in patients of attempted self harm attending tertiary care hospital

Deliberate self-harm is a widespread yet often hidden problem in the community. Insomnia is known to be an independent risk factor for suicide. The quality of life of a person paints a picture of the stressors which might have lead to the act of self harm. So we conducted a cross sectional study of 40 patients who presented within 15 days of an act of self harm to find an association between sleep quality and quality of life and self harm. The socio-demographic data was collected using a specially designed proforma. A clinical interview was done to identify any underlying psychiatric illness using ICD-10 diagnostic criteria, the quality of sleep was assessed using Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index and quality of life by WHOQOL-BREF scale. A signficant correlation was found between sleep disturbance, poor quality of life with presence of suicidal intent in patients of self harm.