ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Public Health
Sec. Injury Prevention and Control
Volume 13 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fpubh.2025.1571579
This article is part of the Research TopicGeographic Information Systems in Injury Research: Bridging Spatial Science and Public HealthView all 3 articles
Global burden and trends of self-harm from 1990 to 2021, with predictions to 2050
Provisionally accepted
- Danyang People's Hospital, Danyang, China
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Self-harm has become a major public health problem globally. Data on the burden of self-harm in this study were taken from the GBD 2021. This study aimed to quantify historical trends (1990–2021) in the global burden of self-harm across genders, age groups, and regions, and project future changes (2022–2050) through Bayesian forecasting models. Based on the seven GBD super-regions, the burden of self-harm was analyzed by region, age, and gender from 1990 to 2021. Hierarchical statistical approach was used to predict trends in global and regional changes in the burden of self-harm, 2022-2050. In 2021, the global DALYs and death counts from self-harm were 33.5 million (95% UI: 31.3-35.8) and 746.4 thousand (95% UI: 691.8-799.8). The region with the highest number of DALYs and deaths is South Asia and the highest age-standardized rates of DALYs and mortality were in central Europe, eastern Europe, and central Asia. Globally, the burden of self-harm was higher for males than for females. DALYs rates were highest among adolescents and young adults (20-29 years), whereas mortality rates showed a predominantly age-progressive pattern with the highest burden observed in middle-aged and older populations, albeit with a modest decline in the oldest age groups. Forecasting models showed a sustained decline in the global burden of self-harm from 2022-2050. The results highlight the need for policymakers to allocate resources to high-burden regions (e.g., South Asia and Eastern Europe), to implement gender- and age-specific prevention programs, and to strengthen cross-sectoral collaboration to address the underlying social determinants of self-harm. The findings call for strengthened mental health services and targeted interventions to effectively respond to and reduce the devastating impact of self-harm on individuals and the global community.
Keywords: self-harm, disease burden, Mortality, DALYs, global
Received: 05 Feb 2025; Accepted: 28 Apr 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Xie, Tang, Liu, Dong and Zhang. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Xiaojun Zhang, Danyang People's Hospital, Danyang, China
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