'Huge' increase in self-harm cases among schoolgirls

THERE HAS been a “huge” increase in the numbers of girls in first year in secondary school being referred to a crisis centre for people who self-harm, its clinical director has said.

Cindy O’Connor, clinical director and deputy chief executive of Pieta House, said some girls found the transition from primary school to secondary school very difficult. Hormonal changes that accompanied puberty also contributed to the stress girls were under.

“We are quite amazed ourselves at the amount of referrals that we would have,” she said.

Though she did not have figures specific to 12- and 13-year-old girls, she said there had been a “huge” increase in their numbers being referred from secondary schools. Some 300 under-18s had been referred to the centre last year, she said, both with self-harm and suicidal ideation. The youngest was seven.

Ms O’Connor was speaking at a conference at Trinity College Dublin, Safe with Self-Injury, organised by Dr Kay Inckle, from the School of Social Work Social Policy at the college.

The aim of the conference was to promote awareness and improve understanding and responses to self-injury among service providers, policymakers and the wider public.

Ms O’Connor said there were myths around self-harm, including that the person involved had a borderline personality disorder or had been sexually abused. For most people, self-harm was simply a coping strategy.

A lot of people who presented at Pieta House were intelligent, creative, gifted, talented people, she said.

“We would never say to somebody to stop engaging in self-harm because if we were to take that coping strategy mechanism from them too early without putting something else in place, we could move them to suicide ideation.”

Martin Rogan, assistant national director of mental health at the HSE, told the conference people who self-harmed were sometimes labelled as attention seekers, but this was not the case.

Although 12,000 people presented at A&E with self-inflicted injuries, a further 60,000 had not sought attention, so they were not “attention seekers”, he said.