Reports of self-harm jumped nearly 70 percent among younger teen girls between 2011 and 2014, suggesting an urgent need for interventions targeted to this group, researchers say. Self-harm, such as self-poisoning or self-injury, is the strongest risk factor for subsequent suicide, and suicide is the second most common cause of death before age 25 worldwide, the study team notes in the journal The BMJ. “We found an increase in self-harm among girls aged 13-16 years of age not seen in any other age groups amongst girls or any of the age range we investigated among boys,” lead author Catharine Morgan told Reuters Health in an email. “We are unable to say for certain why this rise was observed. It may be a combination of an increase in girls actually reporting the self-harm or it may be a reflection of an increase in psychological distress among girls of this age group,” said Morgan, a researcher at the University of Manchester. Regardless of the reasons for this rise, we hope the study improves the awareness of the potentially growing problem of psychological distress in all young people, she added.

To assess the more recent prevalence of self-harm and whether kids are receiving adequate treatment for psychological distress, Morgan and her colleagues analyzed electronic health records covering 647 general medical practices. Children and teens ages 10 to 19 who had harmed themselves between 2001 and 2014 were included in the study. Almost 17,000 kids and teens had harmed themselves at least once, and about 73 percent were girls. Just over 84 percent of the incidents were drug overdoses and about 12 percent were self-cutting episodes. Between 2 percent and 3 percent poisoned themselves, and the remaining 1 percent of incidents involved hanging, suffocation, jumping and scalding. Roughly one in five of these kids harmed themselves again sometime during the year after their first episode, researchers found. The research team also found high rates of depression and anxiety disorders among the kids who self-harmed. About one-third of the girls and one-quarter of the boys were diagnosed with depression, for example.