THE Hospital’s Emergency Department has dealt with 137 cases of self-harm in the first six months of this year – 46 of them involving individuals under the age of 20.
A freedom-of-information request revealed the figures for the last nine years, revealing that the number of Islanders under the age of 20 who attended the department due to self-harm more than doubled between 2019 and 2021, from 43 to 95.
In 2022 and 2023, 77 and 71 cases of individuals under the age of 20 were dealt with at the Hospital.
It has emerged that the number of cases of people over the age of 50 being treated after self-harming at the Hospital spiked from 27 to 40 in 2023, with 22 cases already in 2024.
Matt Falla, who founded the peer support group Man Club, told the JEP’s sister publication Bailiwick Express that the figures demonstrated a “mental-health epidemic” fuelled by social media and smartphones among young people.
“We have a mental-health epidemic, which I strongly believe is part and parcel of the fact that we’re living in hyper novel times, where the world is developing quicker than our brains can possibly keep up with,” Mr Falla explained.
He argued that social media, in particular, was exacerbating the problem by providing a “fake version of connection” that fails to meet our fundamental social needs.
