Incidences of self harm rises among adolescents: study

By Dr. Ananya Mandal, MDNov 17 2011

A recent large population based study shows that at least one in 12 teenagers commit self-harm. The commonest form of self harm is by cutting or burning, as a way of coping with depression, anxiety or other problems.

The research team from Australia additionally found that poisoning was the second most common method of self-harm, followed by self-battery such as deliberate knocking heads or limbs against walls or other objects.

The group of young people involved in the study, run by Melbourne's Murdoch Children’s Research Institute and King's College in London, were asked at regular intervals between 1992 and 2008 about whether they self-harmed. The problem was more common among girls than boys, with 10 per cent of the female subjects among the 1802 included in the study admitting to self-harm, compared to 6 per cent of boys.

Drinking alcohol, smoking cigarettes or cannabis and indulging in anti-social behaviour all doubled the risk for a teen self-harming.

However when these teenagers were followed up until adulthood it was seen that the behavior declines by the time the teenagers reached young adulthood, when only 10 per cent of the participants said they had continued to hurt themselves.

The work, jointly conducted by experts from Melbourne's Murdoch Childrens Research Institute and from King's College, London University, and published yesterday in The Lancet, is the first population-based study to follow a group of self-harming adolescents over time, charting the course of their self-harm habit into adulthood.

According to authors the study results suggest “that most adolescent self-harming behaviour resolves spontaneously” but the underlying mental problems that triggered the behaviour might not disappear without treatment. Professor George Patton from the Centre of Adolescent Health in the Murdoch Children’s Research Institute, and one of the paper's seven authors, said adults probably stopped self-harming as they developed other ways to cope with difficult emotions. He said, “Young people who self-harm commonly have underlying emotional problems, reflected in the high levels of depression and anxiety that were detected among those who reported self-harm... These problems do not always resolve without treatment.”

“Most of the self-harm was not about attempting suicide,” Professor Patton said. “Rather it was an attempt to deal with emotions that the individual felt were overwhelming. But most of it is a phase and they move on to different strategies of dealing with these emotions.”

Prof Patton said the hormonal changes teens undergo and the way their brain develops around puberty could affect how they dealt with emotions. “The feelings they have often provoke intense feelings of anxiety,” he said. “It may be something that emerges initially through some experience of pain or hurting themselves in some way, which initially is distracting and seems at the time beneficial, but may progress from there to something like self-harm.”

Professor Anthony Jorm, NHMRC Australian Fellow at the Orygen Youth Health Research Centre, said it was an “important study, showing that self-harm is common in Australian adolescents”. “An implication of the study is that parents, teachers and others who have close association with adolescents, need to be able to identify and support those at risk of mental health problems, including self-harm,” Professor Jorm said. “Mental health first aid training needs to be widely available to adults who live or work with adolescents.”