HEALTH is set to review a spike in serious cases of self-harm, after 137 admissions to hospital were recorded in the first six months of this year – with 46 involving those under the age of 20.
Mental-health director Andy Weir confirmed that both adult and children’s mental-health services would be looking into self-harm cases to better understand patterns and causes.
“Self-harm is a complicated issue, and it isn’t always linked to suicidal intent,” Mr Weir told the JEP.
“Increasingly, we’re seeing some young people who report using self-harm as a way of coping.”
His comments come after a freedom-of-information request revealed the figures for the last nine years.
The data showed that the number of Islanders under the age of 20 who attended the Emergency Department due to self-harm more than doubled between 2019 and 2021, from 43 to 95.
In 2022 and 2023, 77 and 71 cases were recorded respectively of individuals under the age of 20 who were dealt with at the Hospital.
“We wanted to have a real look at this data,” the director said. “We’re looking at trying to separate out people under 18 from people 18 to 20.”
Mr Weir also highlighted that the data reflected the number of cases rather than individuals, and that the severity of the recorded self-harm incidents would vary greatly.
“This isn’t the number of individuals. It is the number of cases,” he said. “The other thing it’s really important to say about this data is it doesn’t tell you anything at all about the nature of the self harm.
“So it could be that someone has superficially cut themselves, for example, right the way through to someone who’s made a really serious attempt upon their life.”
