Self-harming amongst pre-teens now at crisis point
THERE has been a significant rise in the number of pre-teenage children engaging in acts of self-harm since the Covid-19 pandemic, according to youth workers and mental health charities.
It comes as figures provided to the Irish Mail on Sunday show that incidences of self-harm leading to hospitalisation among 10 to 14-year-olds in 2020 – the first year of the lockdowns – was already well over three times higher than it was in 2007.
And while various bodies that study suicide and self-harm patterns are unable to yet provide definitive data for the last two years, experts on the ground say the situation has got noticeably worse since the pandemic.
Community activist and youth worker Trina O’Connor said Ireland is ‘in an absolute crisis in mental health care for young people, and particularly under 12s’.
‘From the age of nine up to 12 are like 14 to 16-year olds’
Ms O’Connor said children ‘from about the age of nine up to 12’ are ‘almost like the 14 to 16-year-olds of years ago. That’s what we’re dealing with.’ Figures provided by the National Suicide Research Foundation (NSRF) in University College Cork showed a steady increase in the number of selfharm presentations to hospital in young people for almost every year between 2007 and 2020. In 2007, there were 185 such cases among 10 to 14-year-olds. By 2015 that had swollen to 394 and in 2020 the number was 615 – a 232% increase on 2007.
For 15 to 19-year-olds, the number rose steadily from 1,541 in 2007 to 2,309 in 2020 – a 50% increase.
NSRF head of research Dr Paul Corcoran said that while the number of self-harm presentations by 15 to 19-year-olds is still much larger, the increase has been ‘more striking’ among 10 to 14-year-olds.
The population of the 10 to 14 cohort grew 28% between 2007 and 2020, while the 15 to 19 cohort grew 12%. But Dr Corcoran told the MoS the population rise is ‘not enough at all to account for the increase in self-harm presentations’.
The NSRF is not yet able to provide numbers for 2021, owing to a stalling of data collection during the pandemic.
Tony Philpott, who is CEO at Youth Suicide Prevention Ireland, said they deal mainly with older teenagers, but that they have ‘certainly heard stories’ about a rise in self-harm in younger children. He said there has been ‘a huge increase in the amount of contacts we’ve had [from secondary school-aged children] since the pandemic.
Despite the growing problem, the ability of the Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services (CAMHS) to adequately address the issue will be hampered by spending cuts in health, where a senior department source said planned key reforms are now ‘utterly compromised’. Describing the situation on the ground, Trina O’Connor said we are in ‘a crisis in youth mental health under the age of 12’.
She told the MoS: ‘What’s happening is, because the [CAMHS] waiting lists are so long, these kids are not getting a timely intervention when this could be stopped.’
She described self-harm as a type of ‘balloon’ a child sends up that signals they are not doing Okay.
‘It can be stuff like losing interest in friendships, maybe changing eating habits. Sometimes you see, particularly in girls, an eating disorder – bulimia, anorexia. And they’re also harming themselves. They cut and they scratch their arms, their thighs, their buttocks, and a lot of that is very hidden.’
Ms O’Connor suggested constant access to the ‘wild west’ internet as a contributing factor to the increase in self-harm.
‘Some of these Tik Tok and Instagram [accounts] have private groups where people are self-harming in groups together. So they have a community of self-harmers online. It’s not that social media drives it, but it certainly will perpetuate it and reinforce it.’
In response to queries from the MoS, a HSE spokeswoman said: ‘The HSE has made CAMHS and youth mental health service improvement a priority and has made significant improvements, such as five new CAMHS hubs to support CAMHS teams.’