Hospitalizations for self-harm way up among teens: report
Posted November 18, 2014 2:09 pm.
This article is more than 5 years old.
TORONTO (NEWS1130) – A new report is painting a troubling picture about a sharp increase in a disturbing practice among some tweens and teens: self-harming.
The report says there has been an 85 per cent increase in the number of children aged 10 to 17 who get admitted to hospital because of incidents involving self-harm.
The vast majority of those hospitalizations result from poisonings involving prescription drugs.
But the report, from the Canadian Institute for Health Information, also records a sharp increase in hospitalizations for self cutting or piercing.
Most of those events were recorded among girls; hospitalizations for cutting rose 90 per cent over the past five years among girls.
The overall numbers are small, but experts say the hospitalization data would not capture most cases, because most tweens and teens who cut themselves would not end up requiring in-patient hospital care.
