Non-suicidal self-injury and anorexia nervosa: A systematic scoping review

Psychiatric comorbidities are frequent in anorexia nervosa, non-suicidal self-injury being one of the more frequent. The aim of this study was to review the literature exploring the links between these disorders and thus to improve our understanding of their causality, risks, and consequences.

We used electronic searches in Pubmed, Cochrane, PsychInfo, and Web of Science to conduct a systematic scoping review of the publications dealing with the association between non-suicidal self-injury and anorexia nervosa published through November 2023.

The study finally included thirty-three studies, mainly of female adolescents and young women, and most frequently from an epidemiological perspective. The results confirmed a frequent association between non-suicidal self-injury and anorexia nervosa, and a significantly higher prevalence of such self-injury in the anorexia subtype involving binge-eating/purging than in the purely restrictive subtype. This result appears to confirm an earlier finding that only the diagnosis of anorexia nervosa with binge-eating/purging behaviours predicts the occurrence of non-suicidal self-injury during eating disorder. In addition, results reported that the risks of psychiatric comorbidities and of suicide were higher and that the treatment of anorexia was longer and the weight gain slower in those patients.

This study confirmed the association between these two disorders which makes their management more complex. More rapid identification of non-suicidal self-injury in anorexia nervosa and a better understanding of its underlying psychopathological processes are needed to propose appropriate multidisciplinary care. More systematic studies on the associations between these disorders are essential.