June 22, 2012

expert reaction to study of self-harm and suicide in adolescents

Globally, suicide is the most common cause of death in female adolescents, and the third most common cause of death in male adolescents. A paper in the Lancet examined existing research to look at the connections between self-harm and suicide in young people.

Dan Taylor, London Coordinator at CALM (Campaign Against Living Miserably), said:

“Prof. Keith Hawton et al.’s report clearly demonstrates the need for successful prevention initiatives that use new social media to engage young people feeling down, self-harming or suicidal.

“CALM’s social media and website are unique in reaching men in a way they can relate to, with articles covering a wide range of issues written by and for men, in an engaging and non-clinical way.

“In the UK, while suicide is going down in young men, the rate is increasing in middle aged and older men, which isn’t clear from the Lancet release. When suicide is the single biggest killer of men aged 15-34 nationally, with 75% suicides being male (ONS 2010), we need to ask why suicide is a male issue.

“We think most interventions have blanked gender – but all those that have started with a gender-based approach have found, ‘amazingly’, that men will actually respond to this.

“CALM and its helpline can just about keep on top of demand and respond to people wanting to support the campaign, and our website and social media presence is critical to this.”

Dr Andrew McCulloch, Chief Executive of the Mental Health Foundation, said:

“It is worrying that so little progress has been made in researching self-harm and suicide in young people. Six years ago we produced Truth Hurts, the final report of the National Inquiry into self-harm among young people, which called for more research on the subject of self-harm. Sadly little has been done and an alarming number of young people still harm themselves. Mental health research only receives a shocking 40% of the funding that comparable disease groups do, such as cancer and heart disease, and a minute proportion of this is spent on practical research addressing the needs of young people. It is time for the Government, working with research funders, to take action and dedicate some more resources to researching self-harm and suicide in young people and indeed other age groups.”

Sarah Brennan, Chief Executive of Young Minds, said:

“This is a really important paper that begins to help us understand how we should be supporting young people who are suicidal and those who self-harm, and how we can learn more about the links between the two. Self-harm and suicide are still poorly understood and not contextualized, unlike eating disorders where links are finally being made between body image in society and eating problems.

“The paper rightly also flags up the dangers posed by the internet and the threats to young people from chatrooms and websites that advocate self-harm and suicide. There is a massive gap between those who want to support young people and what is happening between young people online. We adults created the technology that has led to the online space young people exist in and we have to take responsibility for this and address how we communicate effectively with young people who are suffering

“Parents also need the knowledge and tools to give their children support, schools need to place much more emphasis on teaching emotional resilience and coping skills, and services that intervene early when mental health problems first arise need to be given much greater priority and appropriate investment. As the paper also rightly highlights, we need to invest in more research on effective programmes for those who self-harm and suffer suicidal feelings in order to prevent yet more needless and tragic deaths at a young age.”

‘Self-harm and suicide in adolescents’ by Hawton, K. et al., published in the Lancet on Friday 22nd June.