Self-harm admissions for children rise 80%

Large spike since 2007 sees children’s wards struggling with pyschiatric patients as young as seven and eight

CHILDREN as young as seven or eight are presenting to Irish hospitals with self-harming, according to a leading child psychiatrist.

Figures from the National SelfHarm Registry Ireland reveal the number of children from the ages of ten to 17 years who presented with self-harm in 2018 was 1,657 – a rise of nearly 80% from the 930 children in 2007.

Dr Kieran Moore, a specialist consultant paediatric psychiatrist, said cases of self-harming and suicidal children are coming into wards in paediatric hospitals which are totally inappropriate settings.

‘When I started 20 years ago in this area of medicine it was very rare. A case about a nine-year-old with depression made national headlines,’ Dr Moore said.

‘Now we’re getting children who are self-harming younger than that, at age eight and seven, and I even had a six-year-old thinking about self-harming.’

The consultant, who is speaking on his own behalf, said children are ending up in A&E in paediatric hospitals but it is a hidden issue.

He said: ‘At the moment all over the country there are children in paediatric hospitals and the primary reason for presentation is psychiatric and it’s not being recorded. There is no national way of recording this.’

Dr Moore said the setting of a paediatric ward is completely inappropriate for children with psychiatric conditions.

‘Paediatric wards are full of risks for children who are suicidal, with oxygen tubing just above the bed, normal glass that is easily broken and electrical power points because that’s what other patients need. Rarely, you may have children that have thoughts of harming others.’

The figures from the National Self-Harm Registry Ireland at the National Suicide Research Foundation revealed that 57 children aged ten years have presented with selfharm from 2007 to 2018.

There were 117 children aged 11, 312 children were aged 12 and 971 children were aged 13 over the 11 years.

The child psychiatrist says that while the staff in paediatric hospitals are doing amazing work in crisis situations, they do not have the appropriate training.

He said: ‘There are all sorts of risks that go on the whole time and hospitals do what they can, for example having a care worker with the child all the time, but they are not trained either to treat a child with mental illness.’

Dr Moore, who has worked in child psychiatry in Dublin and Wexford, believes previous generations of children rarely self-harmed as they would generally have never had heard of it.

He said: ‘In social media, particularly, children will get on to a friend and say “I feel like that, I tried to self-harm, have you tried it what do you think?”

‘In most of those cases, they are not trying to kill themselves. They are often doing it for a reason, a genuine reason, but it’s done much more quickly, and it comes to attention much more quickly.’

Parents are often left with little option but to bring their child to A&E because mental health services for children are overrun and there are lengthy waiting lists.

‘20 years ago it was very rare’

‘They are often doing it for a reason’