Nuteistų ir suimtų asmenų savižalos motyvai ; The convicted and arrested persons' motivation for self-injury

Open Access

Abstract

Relevance of the theme: self-injury realization considerably aggravates the somatic, social and psychical condition of the convicted and arrested persons; health and life are devalued. Furthermore, the imprisonment system incurs considerable financial loss. Self-injury consist the largest part of the total traumatism in the imprisonment institutions (48 per cent). There is a need to explore the problems of the self-injured convicted and arrested persons at the imprisonment institutions; to find the causes of such behaviour in order to determine the prevention possibilities by the further researches of this phenomenon. According to the Law on Nursing Practice of the Republic of Lithuania [1] issued in 2001, one of the functions of nursing is to ensure the physical, mental and social care of the healthy and ill persons. Originality of the theme: until now, in the theory and practice of nursing in our country there was no sufficient attention to the mental and social care of the convicted and arrested persons who are a part of the society. There are also no subjective researches or publications on the convicted and arrested persons' self-injury motives. Goal of the thesis: to analyse the motives of self-injury of the convicted and arrested persons. Tasks of the thesis: To analyse the medical statistic data and other documents related to the self-injury in order to assess the dynamics of the phenomenon and to find the factors having the most considerable influence on self-injury of convicted and arrested persons; to research the consultations which are provided to the self-injured persons. Hypothesis: social isolation involves the most frequent motives of self-injury of convicted and arrested persons. Subject of the research: self-injured convicted and arrested persons. 210 respondents from 12 imprisonment institutions took part in the research. Research methods: Analysis of medical statistical data and other medical documents; questionnaire survey (cross-section research). 210 convicted and arrested persons were surveyed. 21 of them needed stationary treatment because of self-injury and were hospitalized at the Hospital of imprisonment institutions (LAVL); and 189 persons were from 11 national imprisonment institutions. Questionnaire survey was carried out in July – August of 2007. The program Microsoft Excel was applied for diagrams and tables' formation as well as program packet SPSS 13.0 for Windows was applied for analysis of research data. Conclusions: 1) Self-injury consist the largest part of the total traumatism in the imprisonment institutions (48 per cents); when new legislation had came into effect, the total number of self-injuries decreased, but the leaders remained the same: Lukiškės TI-K (241, 16,2 % and 185, 34,0 %), Alytus PN (162, 10,9 % and 115, 21,1 %), Pravieniškės 2 PN-AK (188, 12,6 % and 62, 11,3 %); 2) the most influential factors of self-injury of convicted and arrested persons: number of convictions (correlation analysis showed that increase of the number of convictions increases the number of self-injury by 0,822 times); education (secondary – 35,1 per cent, basic – 22,1 per cent, elementary – 19,7 per cent, higher – 0 per cent of respondents); longing for family and friends (45,2 per cent); to little appointments with family and friends (24,3 per cent); improper life conditions (42,4 per cent); odds with employees (32,9 per cent); lack of occupation (work – 31,9 per cent; study – 31,6 per cent); 3) the most frequent motives of self-injury of convicted and arrested persons are the following: attempted suicide (25,7 per cent); rejection by family (21,9 per cent); debts (20,0 per cent); 4) only 56,94 per cent of self-injured were consulted by specialist. Of them: 30,6 per cent who attempted suicide and 12,4 per cent attempted self-injure. This fact shows that the self-injury prevention basis is weak; 5) the hypothesis of the thesis was confirmed.