Every 12th teen intentionally harms himself
Last reviewed: 23.04.2024
All iLive content is medically reviewed or fact checked to ensure as much factual accuracy as possible.
We have strict sourcing guidelines and only link to reputable media sites, academic research institutions and, whenever possible, medically peer reviewed studies. Note that the numbers in parentheses ([1], [2], etc.) are clickable links to these studies.
If you feel that any of our content is inaccurate, out-of-date, or otherwise questionable, please select it and press Ctrl + Enter.
Every 12th teenager, mostly girls, deliberately do themselves harm, such as cutting, burning, overdosing with drugs or committing acts that threaten life. About 10% of them continue to deliberately do themselves bodily harm at a young age.
Since self-harm is one of the strongest predictors of committing suicide, psychiatrists who conducted this study hope that these findings will help mobilize more active and earlier diagnosis and treatment of people at risk.
"The numbers we are talking about here are huge," says Keith Houghton of the Center for Suicide Studies at Oxford University in the UK, who reviewed the findings at a briefing in London, United Kingdom.
George Patton, one of the authors of the study from the Adolescent Health Center in Australia, said the results showed a "window of vulnerability" for young people who often struggle with their emotional problems by causing physical pain.
Their report, published in the medical journal Lancet, says that self-harming adolescents often have mental health problems that need to be addressed through treatment.
"Because of the connection between self-harm and suicide, the treatment of common mental disorders in adolescence can be an important component of youth suicide prevention," they said.
Self-harm is a global health problem, it is especially common among girls and women between the ages of 15 and 24. According to the World Health Organization, nearly one million people die from suicide each year, which corresponds to one death every 40 seconds. In the past 45 years, the suicide rate has increased by 60% worldwide.
In this study, Patton and Paul Moran of the Institute of Psychiatry (Australia) investigated samples of young people in Victoria aged between 15 and 29 between 1992 and 2008.
The study involved 1802 people, of whom 8% reported cases of self-harm. Girls were more likely to intentionally harm themselves than boys - 10% and 6% respectively.
Moran connects this behavior with a combination of hormonal changes during puberty and changes in the brain, in particular, the cortex of the prefrontal zone, which is associated with planning, expression of personality and behavior modeling.
By the time the participants reached adulthood, self-harm has declined dramatically: at the age of 29 years, less than 1% of participants reported self-harm.
This reduction in cases over time "should not make us think that self-harm is only the development phase of adolescents."
Unfortunately, the experience of many studies shows an alarming tendency to increase the number of people who are doing themselves harm.
[