USA - Self-injury may start early in some kids: study

Some children are hitting, cutting or otherwise harming themselves as early as the third grade of primary school, according to a US study.

Other studies have suggested that about 20 per cent of teens and young adults engage in self-injury at some point to relieve negative emotions or reach out for help. But the current report, published in the journal Pediatrics, was the first to ask the question of children as young as seven.

The researchers found one in 12 of the kids in the third, sixth and ninth grades that they interviewed had self-harmed at least once without the intention of killing themselves.

"A lot of people tend to think that school-aged children, they're happy, they don't have a lot to worry about," said Benjamin Hankin, a psychologist from the University of Denver who worked on the study.

"Clearly a lot more kids are doing this than people have known."

Hankin and his colleagues spoke with 665 youth about their thoughts and behaviors related to self-harm. They found close to eight per cent of third graders, four per cent of sixth grades and 13 per cent of ninth graders had hit, cut, burned or otherwise purposefully injured themselves at least once.

In younger children, hitting was the most common form of self-injury, whereas high schoolers were more likely to cut or carve their skin.

Ten of the youths, or 1.5 per cent, met proposed psychological criteria for a diagnosis of non-suicidal self-injury, meaning they had hurt themselves at least five times and had a lot of negative feelings tied to the behavior.

Youth who self-harm often say they do it to help stop bad emotions, or to feel something - even pain - when they are otherwise feeling numb, according to psychologists.

"You can have young kids who are experiencing a lot of emotions, things that they don't know how to deal with, so they start banging their head against the wall," Hankin said.

Stephen Lewis, who has studied self-injury at the University of Guelph in Ontario, Canada, said parents who discover their child may be self-harming should try to act in a calm, non-judgmental way, even if they are upset.

"For parents, the first step would be to talk to their child about it, to try to understand what's going on - what's motivating it - and what might be going on in the child's life that's contributing to it," he added.

Experts said the bright side is that anxiety and depression, as well as self-injury, are very treatable.

"With the right help, these don't have to be long-term problems for kids," said Steven Pastyrnak, head of pediatric psychology at Helen DeVos Children's Hospital in Grand Rapids, Michigan.

Reuters