Feb 21, 2021, Guardian: About 7% of UK children have attempted suicide by age of 17 – study https://www.theguardian.com/society/2021/feb/21/uk-17-year-olds-mental-health-crisis
About 7% of children have attempted suicide by the age of 17 and almost one in four say they have self-harmed in the past year, according to a paper in the British Journal of Psychiatry, and experts say the figures could rise as a result of the pandemic. …
She added: “There is definitely a need to provide more, better and earlier support for young people to prevent their mental health difficulties from getting so severe, but equally we really need to think about why young people today are struggling so much.”
Dubicka said data from NHS Digital showed that 41% of all admissions to hospital for self-harm were teenagers. “What we are seeing year on year clinically is more young people presenting self-harm in A&E and admissions to paediatric beds and mental health units.”
She said there was not enough research into why this was happening but, based on her work, she felt that austerity and poverty were leading to more people experiencing difficulties.
“So we have widespread societal driving factors which are most certainly impacting on children. The other issue is education has been a huge stress for young people,” she said, adding that a general rise in mental health problems was contributing to a rise in self-harming.
“I think it’s important that all children are able to thrive in the education system. We know 50% of young people make it to university and another 50% don’t, and within that group there are lots of disadvantaged children with learning difficulties or autism or looked-after and traumatised children. We need equal chances for all children,” she said.
