Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what his assessment is of the prevalence of self-harm amongst minors.
Data on the prevalence of self-harm amongst minors is not routinely collected.
The 2004 British Child and Adolescent Mental Health Survey found the rate of self-harm in 5-10 year olds was 0.8% in those with no disorder, rising to 6.2% in those with an anxiety disorder and 7.5% in those with hyperkinetic disorder, conduct disorder or one of the less common disorders.
The prevalence of self-harm increased in adolescence with the rates of 1.2% in those with no disorder, rising to 9.4% in those with an anxiety disorder and 18.8% in those with depression. Rates of hospital admission for self-harm have increased sharply over the last decade.
Data on the number of people aged under 18 requiring hospital treatment for self-harm is available through Hospital Episode Statistics. The most recent data is in the following table.
Count of finished admission episodes with a cause code of self-harm and a count of accident and emergency attendances (excluding planned attendances) with a patient group of deliberate self-harm for (1) females under 18 and (2) males under 18 for 2010-11, 2011-12 and 2012-13.
Activity in English NHS Hospitals and English NHS commissioned activity in the independent sector
Year | Accident and emergency attendances | Finished admission episodes | ||
Male | Female | Male | Female | |
2010-11 | 4,038 | 9,264 | 2,594 | 11,400 |
2011-12 | 4,287 | 9,388 | 2,363 | 10,868 |
2012-13 | 3,800 | 9,943 | 2,473 | 12,305 |
Source: Hospital Episode Statistics (HES), Health and Social Care Information Centre
Notes:
a) admissions do not represent the number of inpatients as a person may have more than one admission in one year and
b) a patient may have attended Accident and Emergency (A&E) and then been admitted to hospital as a single event, in this case the event would be included in both the A&E and hospital admission figures
c) reference to the footnotes should be made when interpreting the data.