Deliberate self harm in adolescents: self report survey in schools in England

Abstract

Objective To determine the prevalence of deliberate self harm in adolescents and the factors associated with it. Design Cross sectional survey using anonymous self report questionnaire. Setting 41 schools in England. Participants 6020 pupils aged 15 and 16 years. Main outcome measure Deliberate self harm. Results 398 (6.9%) participants reported an act of deliberate self harm in the previous year that met study criteria. Only 12.6% of episodes had resulted in presentation to hospital. Deliberate self harm was more common in females than it was in males (11.2% v 3.2%; odds ratio 3.9, 95% confidence interval 3.1 to 4.9). In females the factors included in a multivariate logistic regression for deliberate self harm were recent self harm by friends, self harm by family members, drug misuse, depression, anxiety, impulsivity, and low self esteem. In males the factors were suicidal behaviour in friends and family members, drug use, and low self esteem. Conclusions Deliberate self harm is common in adolescents, especially females. School based mental health initiatives are needed. These could include approaches aimed at educating school pupils about mental health problems and screening for those at risk.

Bullying victimisation, self harm and associated factors in Irish adolescent boys

“…Moreover, they were more likely to report self-harm thoughts, to report serious self-harm acts and referrals to psychiatric services (Mills et al, 2004). Several centres of the Child and Adolescent Selfharm in Europe (CASE) study, of which this study is part, found no significant associations between bullying and self-harm in their multi-variate logistic regression models for history of self-harm (De Leo and Heller, 2004, Hawton et al, 2002, Ystgaard et al, 2003, while a Scottish study found an association for both boys and girls (O'Connor et al, 2009). A strong association between school bullying victimisation and self-harm among boys (but not among girls) was reported by the Irish centre of the CASE study (McMahon et al).…”

Clinical and neuropsychological aspects of non-fatal self-harm in schizophrenia

“…Demographicandclinicalinformationwasrecorded,includingdurationofillness, familyhistoryofmentalillnessandhistoryofsubstancemisuse.Individualpast historyofself-harmwasrecordedwiththeDeliberateSelf-harmInventory,aschedule thatrecordsarangeofcommonself-harmfulbehavioursthattheindividualdoesnot classassuicidal [16].Ourenquiriesincludedanopenendeditemtorecordanyforms ofself-harmnotfeaturedinthemainitemsoftheinventory.Inaddition,anyhistory ofeventsthatthepatientconsideredtobesuicideattemptswereelicitedandrecorded usingapublishedschedule [47].Thisdatawasusedtoclassifypatientsintothose with,orwithout,pasthistoriesofself-harmbasedonastandarddefinition [21].…”

Clinical diagnoses, characteristics of risk behaviour, differences between suicidal and non-suicidal subgroups of Hungarian adolescent outpatients practising self-injury

“…According to community-based studies, self-injury (SI, SIB) including suicidal and non-suicidal self-injury (SSI, NSSI) is increasingly prevalent in secondary school reports and in community-based surveys of adolescents ranging from 2.2 to 15% [12,32,43]. However, although researchers do not include cases of violent SI in the statistics of DSH in the majority of studies [19][20][21], frequency data of SI may vary depending on whether impulsive or non-impulsive self-poisoning is considered self-injurious practice by the authors. Hungarian data from the ''Child and adolescent self harm in Europe (CASE)'' project studying the risk factors of youth suicide in a sample of more than 4,000 adolescents failed to discriminate between suicidal and self-injurious behaviour.…”

“…Nonfatal deliberate SI or self-harm is not only most common in young people, especially young females [20,42], but is also the most frequent diagnosis among adolescent females in outpatient psychiatric facilities [18,20,21,25]. Ross and Heath [40] stress that 13.9% of students, especially girls, in community samples report self-mutilation.…”