1 in 12 Teens Deliberately Cut, Hurt Themselves

Nov. 17, 2011— -- At age 14 or 15, a perfect storm of surging hormones, immature brains and unfamiliar emotions drive nearly one in 12 teens to deliberately hurt themselves, most often by cutting or burning their own flesh, or by trying to hang, electrocute, drown or suffocate themselves.

"The window of vulnerability for this experience of self-harm appears to open at around puberty," said Dr. Paul Moran, co-author of a study about self-harm published online Wednesday in The Lancet.

Teens, he said, may hurt themselves to block out emotions "they feel to be intolerable." At particular risk, he said, were teens "on a fast-track to adulthood, those kids who are at the margins at school, who are engaged in early sexual activities, who are using alcohol and drugs at a young age."

Families, educators and even self-injuring youngsters may be relieved to hear that in 90 percent of cases, these frightening, aberrant practices resolve on their own, said Dr. Niall Boyce, a psychiatrist and senior editor of The Lancet. "As with many situations, it is the lack of knowledge that is the root of this fear," Boyce said at a news conference in London highlighting the study's key findings.

Moran, from the Institute of Psychiatry at King's College London, and co-author Dr. George C. Patton, from the Center for Adolescent Health at the Murdoch Children's Research Institute in Melbourne, Australia, said they believed theirs was the first large study to trace "the natural history" of self-harming behavior from its onset in puberty through young adulthood. They pointed out that self-inflicted deaths, including suicides, rise sharply during that same period.

The study authors sought to identify the environmental and biological factors that influence young people's impulses to hurt themselves, which could guide strategies "to prevent further self-harm," Boyce said. He described the new research into the global problem of self-harm as "extremely exciting, extremely interesting. It gives us an idea of how this problem develops."

Moran, Patton and their fellow researchers studied a random group of nearly 2,000 school children, ages 14 and 15, in the Australian state of Victoria, from August 1992 through January 2008. Over the course of those 15 years, and on as many as nine occasions, the students answered questions to assess if, and how often, they'd engaged in self-harm. Anyone who answered affirmatively when asked if they'd "ever deliberately hurt yourself or done anything that you know might have harmed or even killed you?" was asked to describe the episodes.

Moran said their answers, and the years of observing them, yielded several important insights:

Teenage self-harmers often have "serious emotional difficulties" and need help and support, lest they suffer persistent problems later in life, Moran said. Therefore, he said, adults "living and working with young people" need to be able to spot the signs of "persistent distress."