Child suicide attempts by overdose more than quadruple in 10 years
Experts warn of mental health crisis because of smartphones and pandemic
THE number of children aged 12 and under who were discharged from hospital after intentional overdosing has more than quadrupled over the past decade.
And between 2019 and 2021 alone, the number of discharges more than tripled, before dropping again slightly last year, new figures obtained by the Irish Mail on Sunday reveal.
It comes as experts warn of a mental health crisis among ever younger children, coinciding with increased smartphone use and accelerated by the pandemic.
Last year, 36 children aged 12 and under were discharged from hospital after ‘intentional self-poisoning’ – overdosing on prescription or over-the-counter medication – according to figures provided by the Health Service Executive (HSE). This compares to just eight children recorded as intentionally ‘self-poisoning’ in 2013.
The number jumped from 13 in 2019 to 42 in 2021.
However, community activist and youth worker Trina O’Connor warned these figures only reflect a fraction of the problem.
She told the MoS: ‘I strongly suggest that these figures are not representing the full picture. So much of this happens and it doesn’t get to the hospital – it’s dealt with in the family. Three or four attempts is the average rate before somebody seeks medical care.’
Ms O’Connor said she has ‘very often’ seen children taking their parents’ or grandparents’ medication, particularly those in an intergenerational home.
‘Their grandmothers or grandfathers may be on large boxes of Solpadeine because of their medical issues. So these kids have access to drugs that are not street drugs, but are very powerful and very addictive.’
Ms O’Connor works primarily in disadvantaged parts of Dublin, but leading child and adolescent psychotherapist Stuart Wilson said the problem is ‘across the spectrum – right across all cultures and social
groups’.
He also suggested the figures were an ‘underestimation’.
Mr Wilson told the MoS: ‘I’m underwhelmed [by the numbers] in some ways, though it’s an overwhelming situation.
‘We’re seeing more and more situations around self-poisoning and self-harm, and we’re seeing it from a younger age.’
Virtually identical patterns emerge for self-harm in general in under 12s in the same period, according to the HSE figures.
The number of discharges for self-harm, which includes self-poisoning, almost tripled between 2019 and 2021, from 27 to 78, and has more than quadrupled in the last 10 years – from 14 in 2013 to 57 in 2022.
Mr Wilson explained such behaviours were normally associated with the ‘interiority’ stage of a child’s development – adolescence – whereas it has become more common in the ‘dis-embedding’ stage, around fifth or sixth class.
He said self-poisoning tends to happen more with girls.
Self-harm and overdoses in 13 to 16-year-olds have also grown steadily in the last 10 years, again with a sharp rise since the pandemic.
The number of discharges after self-harm and overdosing in that cohort in 2022 was well over double the number from 10 years ago, with the biggest leap happening between 2019 and 2020.
In 2021, the year with the highest number on record, 676 children aged 13 to 16 were discharged from hospital after self-poisoning, compared to 278 in 2013 and 368 in 2019.
For self-harm in general, including self-poisoning, the number went from 325 in 2013 to 444 in 2019. In 2021 the number was 794, falling back to 749 last year.
Psychotherapist and author Joanna Fortune said the rise in selfpoisoning is particularly concerning.
‘Overdosing is slightly different because if a child is self-harming, it does not automatically mean they’re thinking of suicide,’ she said. ‘It doesn’t preclude it, but it doesn’t automatically mean it.
‘An overdose is a different act entirely. And even if I take something and I don’t intend to end my life, I might end my life, so that’s a whole other situation.’
Ms Fortune, who also contributes to a parenting slot on Newstalk’s Sean Moncrieff radio show, added: ‘We are seeing an increase in anxiety, we are seeing an increase in eating disorders and we are seeing an increase in self-harm behaviour.
‘But when we make significant changes to how a group socialises – which we did and we had to do during Covid restrictions – it’s not entirely surprising when there is significant impact within that same group on how they manage things. That group of children lost access to both formal and informal supports with no notice and no idea as to how long that would be.
Ms Fortune added that, for 10 to 15-year-olds, ‘their important hub of social, emotional development is the outside world. It’s their peer group, not their family. I’m not saying family aren’t important, but it’s not where they go for what they need. They turn to their friends, and they didn’t have access to that.’
Each of the experts who spoke to
the MoS flagged the correlation between smartphone and social media use and selfharm and poor mental health generally.
Alex Cooney, who is CEO of CyberSafeKids, a charity that promotes online safety for children, said that while a ‘very clear causal link’ between smartphone/ social media use and mental health has not been established, technology ‘should absolutely be considered as one of the factors’.
She pointed to the work of US academics Jean Twenge and Jonathan Haidt, whose research has shown that young people’s selfesteem was generally improving until 2007 – the year the first iPhone came out – when it then started to get rapidly worse.
A collation of research published by the Financial Times earlier this year showed how teenagers in the US and UK responded to statements like ‘I feel I am a failure’,
‘So much happens and it doesn’t get to hospital’
‘Self-poisoning tends to happen more with girls’
‘I’m not saying that family aren’t important’
‘My life is not very useful’ and ‘I enjoy life as much as anyone’.
For most of the categories, around 10% of teenagers gave answers that suggested low self-esteem in 2007. This had jumped to 20 to 30% for many categories by 2022.
Ms Cooney told the MoS: ‘For sure, children are accessing content online that is age inappropriate and is cause for concern.
‘We should look at things like the way the recommendation system works on a lot of the platforms in terms of content prioritisation, because we’ve seen that if there is an interest in a topic, it really ups the ante.’
Ms Cooney pointed to the case of Molly Russel, a 14-year-old English schoolgirl who died by suicide in November 2017, after viewing extensive content online related to anxiety, depression, self-harm and suicide.
In an inquest completed last year, the coroner ruled that social media content ‘likely’ contributed to Molly Russel’s death, stating that she had ‘died from an act of self-harm whilst suffering from depression and the negative effects of online content’.