12,000 people treated at A&E departments for self-harm last year

ALMOST 12,000 people attended hospital emergency departments last year seeking medical help for deliberate self-injury.

The Health Service Executive’s assistant national director of mental health, Martin Rogan, said the statistics did not support the view that deliberate self-injury was a form of attention seeking.

“Beyond the 11,900 who presented in our 43 emergency departments last year are a further 60,000 who didn’t seek medical attention,” he said at a conference on deliberate self-harm in Dublin yesterday.