Secondary Prevention of Non-Fatal Deliberate Self-Harm: the Green Card Study

In an attempt to address the low compliance with treatment shown by patients after episodes of non-fatal deliberate self-harm, patients who had harmed themselves for the first time were offered rapid, easy access to on-call trainee psychiatrists. Follow-up data obtained after 1 year showed a significant reduction of actual or seriously threatened deliberate self-harm in the experimental group, who also made considerably less demands on medical & psychiatric services, when compared with controls.