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Most adolescents dying by suicide or harming themselves known to health services


Around 80% of adolescents who died by suicide or who had self-harmed had consulted with their GP or a practice nurse in the preceding year, shows new research.

The large study of 10 to 19-year-olds between 2003 and 2018, published in the Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, also puts forward a series of proposals to deal with the problem.

The study, funded by the NIHR Greater Manchester Patient Safety Translational Research Centre (NIHR GM PSTRC), a partnership between The University of Manchester and The Northern Care Alliance NHS Foundation Trust (NCA).

It showed that 85% who later took their own lives consulted with their GP or a practice nurse at least once in the preceding year; the equivalent figure was 75% for those youngsters who harmed themselves non-fatally.

Lower than expected rates of diagnosis of psychiatric illness, around a third in both groups, were probably down to a lack of contact with mental health services, rather than an absence of psychiatric illness, argue the research team. Depression was by far the commonest of the examined conditions among both groups, accounting for over 54% of all recorded diagnoses.

Also, while suicide was more common in boys, non-fatal self-harm was more common in girls. Two-thirds of adolescents who died by suicide had a history of non-fatal self-harm.

And while self-harm risk rose incrementally with increasing levels of deprivation, suicide risk did not.

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Source: The University of Manchester, 7 December 2021

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