12,000 people treated at A&E departments for self-harm last year
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.
He said 2,000 people who attended hospital last year due to self-injury had returned for a second time.
“We need to understand from a service users’ perspective what this is about and what does it represent.”
He said the HSE has a clinical programme to deal with the issue.
Dr Kay Inckle of Trinity College’s School of Social Work and Social Policy, who organised the conference, said self-injury was not attention-seeking but a coping mechanism.
And, she said, while deliberate self-injury was widespread in Ireland, there was currently no policy or best practice protocol.
Clinical director of Pieta House Suicide Crisis Centre, in Limerick, Cindy O’Connor, said she was shocked at the rising number of secondary school girls referred to the crisis centre for self-harm and suicide.
“Sometimes it might start off with scratching and it could lead on to cutting. Really, the type of self-harm is irrelevant. It is about what is going on beneath that self-harm because, obviously, it is their way of coping with emotional distress,” she said.
Ms O’Connor said that there was a need to respond to the emotional distress rather than the form of self-harm.
Last year 300 people under the age of 18 who engaged in self-harming behaviour took part in Pieta House’s specialised treatment programme.
Zest, an organisation working to prevent self- harm and suicide in the North, said as many men as women were now engaging in self-harm and alcohol was a factor in many instances,
Zest clinical director Noella McConnellogue said the youngest person seen by the organisation was a five-year-old and the eldest was aged 80.
“What we have found in all of the work we have done is that self-harming all started before the age of 12 and that a hurt individual is part of a hurt family,” she said.
Ms O’Connor said: “We need to understand that a lot of the time people are engaging in self-harm, not because it is a suicide attempt but because it is a coping strategy.”
She said Pieta House’s youngest client was just seven years old and had engaged in self-harm before moving to suicide ideation, or thoughts of suicide.
“In Pieta House we aim to move that individual from self harm into self care by encouraging them to adopt healthier coping strategies.
“We would never say to somebody to stop engaging in self harm because if we were to take that coping mechanism from them too early without putting something else in place we could actually move them into suicide ideation.”
CONNECT WITH US TODAY
Be the first to know the latest news and updates
