A report of five cases of self-mutilation for the purpose of insurance fraud

Self-mutilation means direct and deliberate destruction of one's own body tissue without intending suicide. Some of the forensic referrals are the fraudulent persons who wish to obtain insurance benefits by simulating self-induced harms as injuries due to accidents. In this article we report five cases of self-mutilation for the purpose of obtaining insurance payments. These cases were interesting because of the following reasons: (1) Fracture of the tibia bone for the purpose of obtaining insurance payments is extremely rare. To our knowledge, the specialised literature does not present a similar case study as we described here. (2) In the cases we describe here, nobody had prior history of social and psychiatric problems and violence. In addition, on examination, no sign of previous scars was found in the whole body skin. (3) Self-mutilation injuries are often painless, parallel and delicate lines which are most frequently in the upper limb opposite to the dominant hand and in the areas that can be easily reached. In one of our cases, self-mutilation of the leg shin and the dominant hand were on the same side of the body. (4) In our study, all of the cases had high school education and were from small counties. Four patients were within the age range of 20–30 years, living in a populous family (six-member family) and of middle socioeconomic status. These results are consistent with previously available data for self-mutilation in Iran.