Study finds 1 in 12 teenagers self-harm but most stop by their twenties
Despite self-harm being one of the strongest predictors of completed suicide, 90% of young people who self-harm as adolescents cease self-harming once they reach young adulthood. However, those who start self-harming as young adults will have often experienced mental health problems as adolescents, such as anxiety or depression, which should be treated.
The study by Dr Paul Moran at the Institute of Psychiatry at King’s College London, and Professor George C Patton from Centre for Adolescent Health at the Murdoch Children’s Research Institute, Melbourne, Australia was published today in The Lancet and found that around 1 in 12 young people self-harm as adolescents, with the balance skewed towards girls.
“Self-harm is one of the most significant predictors of completed suicide, ” a lead author, Dr Paul Moran, of King’s College London, said.
Of the people who have died by suicide, around 50-60% have a known history of self-harm, according to Professor Keith Hawton, Director of the Centre for Suicide Research, University of Oxford.
The study found that during adolescence, self-harm was associated with symptoms of depression and anxiety, antisocial behaviour, high-risk alcohol use, cannabis use and cigarette smoking. Additionally, those who experienced depression or anxiety during adolescence were around six times more likely to self-harm in young adulthood than adolescents without depression/anxiety.
Lent in the Christian tradition is a time of sacrifice and penance. It also is a period of purification and enlightenment. Pain purifies. It atones for sin and cleanses the soul. Or at least that’s the idea. Theological questions aside, can self-inflicted pain really alleviate the guilt associated with immoral acts? A new study published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, explores the psychological consequences of experiencing bodily pain.
Psychological scientist Brock Bastian of the University of Queensland, Australia and his colleagues recruited a group of young men and women under the guise they were part of a study of mental and physical acuity. Under this pretense, they asked them to write short essays about a time in their lives when they had ostracized someone; this memory of being unkind was intended to prime their personal sense of immorality—and make them feel guilty. A control group merely wrote about a routine event in their lives. [continue reading…]
Actress Meera Syal, 47, was compelled to make a new BBC documentary tackling the subject of self-harm.
Meera was moved after reading the shocking statistics from the Mental Health Foundation that young Asian women are three times more likely to self-harm than any other group.
It was around 11 years ago that Meera picked up a newspaper and read the headline ‘Young Asian women are three times more likely to self-harm than any other group’. [continue reading…]
SANE, the leading mental health charity, today publishes the findings of its study of almost a thousand people with direct experience of self harm, and the results challenge many common misunderstandings about who does it and why.
Study finds 1 in 12 teenagers self-harm but most stop by their twenties
