A one-day meeting was held in the Department of Psychiatry on Wednesday 16 April to mark the fact that at the end of 2025 the Oxford Self-harm Monitoring System had been in place, and continuously funded, for 50 years.
The Monitoring System involves data collection by clinical staff working in the Emergency Department at the John Radcliffe Hospital on all individuals who present with self-harm (self-poisoning or self-injury). This currently involves approximately 2,000 episodes per year. The data is used for a wide range of research projects, including within the Multicentre Study of Self-harm in England.
The Monitoring System was established as a research database by Emeritus Professor of Psychiatry, Keith Hawton, when he was a junior member of the Department in the 1970s. He directed this work until 2023, following which Professor Seena Fazel took over the leadership.
Head of the Department of Psychiatry at Oxford, Professor Belinda Lennox opened the meeting by welcoming everyone and highlighting the importance of the Monitoring System for research in the Department. Professor Sir Louis Appleby, who leads the National Suicide Prevention Strategy for England and the National Inquiry into Suicide and Safety in Mental Health, gave an account of the role of the research from the Monitoring System in relation to national policy regarding management and prevention of self-harm.
Read the full story on the Department of Psychiatry website.