Teenage girls self-harm three times as much as boys, study finds

NEARLY three-quarters of 14-yearolds in the UK who have self-harmed are girls, according to research.

Findings from a study of 11,000 children reveal around 15 per cent of them have deliberately hurt themselves within the previous 12 months. Among them, 73 per cent are girls.

Six in 10 teenage girls said they had been “completely unhappy”, with poor self-image and a toxic social media culture fuelling their despair, researchers found. Misery levels among girls were twice those among boys the same age.

Researchers said young girls were suffering from “toxic social comparisons” in a culture based on unrealistic beauty images, airbrushing and “likes” on social media.

The study of 14-year-olds by Warwick university found 63 per cent of girls and 37 per cent of boys described themselves as “completely unhappy”. Four in five girls said they had a poor self-image, compared with one in four boys. Seven in 10 self-harmers were female, more than twice the rate for boys.

Researchers said growing up in a social media climate appeared to influence the levels of teenage unhappiness and that girls fared worst because they were more likely to blame themselves for their perceived inadequacies.

The study reported: “Online social networks are sites for toxic social comparison, propelled by unrealistic standards of beauty, airbrushed body images and ‘glamorous’ lifestyles, cyberbullying and, most importantly, a form of consensus based not on debate and reasoned argument but on ‘likes’”.

Authors said preventing mental ill health required a better understanding of trends and triggers, such as sexism.

Dr Dimitra Hartas, the lead author, from the Centre for Education Studies at the university, said: “Young people respond by focusing more on the self and less on societal structures likely to promote mental ill health. Girls and young women tend to internalise systemic problems and blame themselves.”

Simon Stevens, head of the NHS, has warned that the service was “picking up the pieces” of an epidemic of mental illness among children, fuelled by social media and he urged companies including Google and Facebook to take more responsibility for the pressures they place on children.

The Daily Telegraph is campaigning for a statutory duty of care, to protect children from mental ill health, abuse and addictive behaviour.

Last year NHS statistics found one in eight teenagers had been referred to mental health specialists.

The NHS Digital study of English youth found the prevalence of such disorders increased as children entered their teenage years.

At younger ages boys were more likely to have a diagnosed condition, with primary school-age boys twice as likely as girls to have a mental disorder. One in eight such boys were found to suffer, compared with one in 15 girls.

But by the ages of 17 to 19, girls were more than twice as likely to have a disorder than boys.