Self harm among young Australians is on the increase, and more needs to be done to understand and address the problem.
This is the call from Garry King, a researcher from Griffith’s Australian Institute for Suicide Research and Prevention.
He says that although the statistics on self harm (also known as non-suicidal self injury) provide differing figures, there is a strong perception of a significant increase over the past two decades, with most of the research indicating a figure of 10%-20% of young people self-injuring at some stage.
Speaking at Griffith University’s Mount Gravatt campus last week, Mr King referred to current prevalence rates of 17% among females aged 15-18 and 12% among males of the same age.
“One of the difficulties of obtaining figures for this issue is that young people can often be quite secretive about what they’re doing, with up to a third potentially not telling anybody,” says Mr King. “Figures for
Skip to content
News and other stories about real people, places, and events in Mount Gravatt and nearby suburbs.