Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps his Department is taking to support people who self-harm.

The Prime Minister recently announced that tailored advice will be provided to parents on supporting their children’s mental health and well-being, including information on subjects such as stress, screen time, online bullying, body image and self-harm. This will be developed by Public Health England by 2020. This will accompany advice provided to children and young people through Public Health England’s Rise Above programme on dealing with difficult emotions and situations that can lead to problems such as stress, bullying and self-harm.

We are aware of a rise in young people self-harming, which is why we included a new key area for action to address self-harming in the cross-Government National Suicide Prevention Strategy in 2017. Our close work with the Home Office and the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport on their Online Harms White Paper will also help to tackle online harms associated with harmful suicide and self-harm content across the internet, including social media.