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  • Bushra Farooq

    Self-harm in children and adolescents: attention seeking or cause for concern?

    Is the reporting of self-harm improving due to better awareness, or are young people really self-harming at increasing rates? How concerned should we be about the increase? In this blog, I draw on recent work by my colleagues in the Multicentre Study of Self-Harm in England.

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  • depression

    Self-harm and Suicide

    Worldwide, 10-20% of young people report having self-harmed at least once before the age of 18, and self-harm is one of the strongest risk factors for completed suicide. Suicide is the 2nd leading cause of death for young people globally, and therefore predictors such as self-harm are of great importance.

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  • Inflammation does not mediate an adverse childhood experience– self-harm risk association

    Inflammation has been proposed to be a candidate mechanism contributing to the association between exposure to adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) and the risk of self-harm. In the first study of its kind, researchers in the UK have now directly studied whether inflammatory processes do indeed mediate this association.

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  • Self-Harm: The Parent’s View

    Though it is not always openly discussed, the impact self-harm has on the individual and their family, can be very distressing. For someone to recover from ‘rock-bottom’ requires support, with family being an obvious source. It makes sense that the pillars of this support system, parents in most cases, feel equipped to support their child in recovering from such an experience. Saying this, there is little research on parents’ perspective of care following self-harm.

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  • Online self-harm content might provide peer support to young people

    Youth today find themselves living in an era of social media, with easy access to a wide range of social networking sites. Unfortunately, emerging evidence suggests that some social technologies might cause more harm than good to some young people’s mental health.

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  • teenage boy stood in room at home wear green hoodie

    Irritability and Later Depression and Self-Harm in Adolescence

    Irritability is common in early childhood and for many children, it reduces over time as they develop better frustration tolerance, language, emotional regulation, and social understanding. However, when irritability remains high across early childhood, it may signal increased vulnerability to later mental health difficulties.

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  • Suicide and Self-Harm Special Edition

    The National Confidential Enquiry into Suicide and Safety in Mental Health Annual Report (2018)  highlighted that suicide in the under 20’s is rising generally and that the number of suicides rises towards late teens.

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  • Suicide and Self-harm Edition Editorial

    The National Confidential Enquiry into Suicide and Safety in Mental Health Annual Report (2018)  highlighted that suicide in the under 20’s is rising generally and that the number of suicides rises towards late teens.

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  • DBT-A reduces self-harming behaviours by improving feelings of hopelessness

    Professor Lars Mehlum and colleagues have completed a prospective 3-year follow-up study, which showed that DBT-A has enduring effects in terms of reducing self-harm frequency in adolescents compared to EUC.

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  • Full length portrait of teenage boy sitting on bed in his room and looking away

    How Neurobiology Can Inform Our Understanding of Non-Suicidal Self-Injury

    Why does non-suicidal self-injury develop and what sustains it? Explore Kaess et al. (2021) on biological, psychological, and social factors, including stress, pain, emotion regulation, and vulnerabilities linked to ongoing self-injury.

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