About 7% of UK children have attempted suicide by age of 17

Source: The Guardian

About 7% of UK children have attempted suicide by age of 17 – study

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.

The figures come from analysis of the millennium cohort study, which follows the lives of about 19,000 young people born at the start of the millennium in England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.

The report says that when the 17-year-olds from the cohort were asked if they had ever hurt themselves “on purpose in an attempt to end your life”, 7% replied yes. When asked if they had self-harmed during the previous year, 24% responded that they had.

The data, which is nationally representative, can be extrapolated to the UK population to give figures of 52,427 17-year-olds having attempted suicide at some point in their lives and 170,744 having self-harmed in the previous 12 months before Covid hit.

Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/society/2021/feb/21/uk-17-year-olds-mental-health-crisis