The South Asia Self Harm Initiative
Global Challenge Research Fund: South Asia Self Harm research capability building Initiative (GCRF-SASHI)
SASHI formed in late 2015 as a collaboration led by the Centre for Mental Health and Society at Bangor University. It is a partnership between researchers working in South Asia and the UK. The purpose of the GCRF-SASHI project is to help to find effective responses to self-harm and suicide in South Asia by building research infrastructure and promoting expertise, with a particular emphasis on high quality surveillance systems. This will allow each country to build a body of evidence to facilitate the development of culturally relevant and effective interventions, both social and medical.
Background
- Self-harm (SH) is amongst the top 25 leading causes of death globally
- Rates of SH are high in South Asia, particularly in rural settings
- The economic burden of SH is both direct (family costs of treatment, lost income due to death and disability) and indirect (significant social costs)
- Reducing suicide mortality is a Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) indicator
Intended Impact of the project
- To create a sustainable legacy of continuing value for practitioners and researchers, and for policy formation
- To create a platform built around hospital and primary care SH surveillance
- To facilitate the collection of new empirical evidence in each country on the prevalence, antecedents & outcomes of SH
- To better understand what affects help-seeking behaviour in South Asia
- To identify causal factors that are amenable to intervention
- To help develop new service models & action plans based on local evidence
- To make extensive use of train-the-trainer models and experiential training
- To enhance the skill set of local research communities
- To develop and disseminate a tool kit for establishing SH registers in low- and middle-income countries
- Ultimately, to contribute to a reduction in the rates of SH in South Asia
