Children of 12 attempting suicide, states report

CHILDREN as young as 12, particularly girls, are attempting suicide and inflicting deliberate self harm, new figures from the National Parasuicide Registry show.

Statistics contained in the registry’s annual report for 2002 show 17-year-old girls are most likely to try to harm themselves. One in every 140 17-year-old girls (706 per 100,000) in the country that attended hospital in 2002 had deliberately self harmed. A separate pilot study of schools in Cork and Kerry, among 15 to18-year-olds, revealed an even more alarming statistic of one in eight females deliberately self harming. Drug overdose was the most common method used followed by self cutting.

Consultant child and adolescent psychiatrist, Dr Helen Keeley, said parasuicide rates tended to be higher among females because they used “softer methods”. The outcome for males is more likely to be fatal.