‘Rapid’ rise in self-harm among teen girls

THERE has been a “rapid” rise in teenage girls selfharming in recent years, experts have found.

Between 2011 and 2014 reports of self-harm among British girls aged between 13 and 16 rose by 68%, according to new research.

Experts from the University of Manchester gathered data from 647 general practices across the UK on the number of children and adolescents aged 10 to 19 years who had self-harmed.

The study, published in The British Medical Journal, found that between 2001 and 2014, 16,912 children and adolescents were identified as having self-harmed at least once.

Of these, almost threequarters (73%) were girls.

For girls, the rate of selfharm was 37.4 out of every 10,000 girls, compared to 12.3 per 10,000 boys.

For girls aged 13 to 16 the rate rose from 45.9 per 10,000 in 2011 to 77.0 per 10,000 in 2014.

The authors said that high rates of self-harm could potentially be due to the emergence of common mental health problems at this age as well as biological factors such as puberty and onset of sexual activity.

They said that reasons behind the increase were speculative but added: “Some evidence indicates that common mental disorders are becoming more common among this age group – perhaps a reflection that today’s early adolescents are living in more stressful times.”

They added: “Exposure to digital media and its potential impact on children and adolescents’ mental health is the centre of continued media debate. Such technologies can be helpful and facilitate access to care but there is also a suggestion that extreme ‘connectedness’ could have detrimental effects.”

Overall in about 55% of cases of self-harm, no referral to mental health services was documented.

The authors said that referral rates to psychiatric services were “low” which suggests “less severe cases or possible reflection of the challenges in accessing specialist services in a timely manner”.