Self-harm: 1 child goes to hospital every 20 minutes in UK for alcohol or drug abuse

London

A child in the United Kingdom was hospitalised every 20 minutes, last year, after consuming either alcohol or drugs to cause self-harm, an investigation has revealed. In the last five years, hospital admissions for kids who self-harmed with drugs or alcohol soared, with hospitalisations for kids between the ages of 10 and 14 rising by 58%, from 5,520 to 8,749, Daily Mail reported.

Hospitalisations for this type of self-harm among all 0 to 19-year-olds also climbed by about 20%, from 22,313 in 2017–18 to 26,450 in 202–22, to one in every 20 minutes on average, according to the survey.

Lockdowns, social media, and a lack of adequate mental health care, according to experts, are to blame for the issue. Timothy Loughton, a Conservative lawmaker and former minister for children, termed the statistics "shocking" and urged the government to investigate the issue thoroughly.

“Despite the determination of this government to achieve parity of esteem between mental illness and physical illness and the extra investment in young people's mental health services, we still need more and more urgent interventions for our children. The unseen consequences of the Covid lockdown are now coming to the surface as we see the impact of closing schools and depriving children of socialising and learning with their peers on their mental health,” Loughton said, as per Daily Mail.

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“Every two months represents 1 per cent of a child's childhood and too much of that growing-up process was taken away from them during lockdown. While we still have lots to do on academic catch-up, this will amount to little if we do not attend to repairing the mental well-being of children at the same time,” he added.

Of the 117,616 children hospitalised since 2017 for intentionally poisoning themselves with drugs or alcohol, 400 were under the age of 10. According to NHS Digital statistics, non-opioid medicines, such as ibuprofen or paracetamol, were responsible for 18,594 hospital admissions last year. Alcohol was the cause of 113 hospitalisations, while drugs and hallucinogens led to 1,188 admissions.

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To curb the rising cases of hospitalisations among children, parents were advised to lock away their alcohol and medications, to prevent their easy accessibility.

“Often young people tell me they used alcohol with their overdose as their friend had tried taking just tablets and it had not worked or they saw on a TV series it didn't work, so they did their research and read that alcohol alongside would be more damaging. My strong advice to all families, whether they think their children are depressed or not, is to dispose of any medications they do not need at a pharmacy and to lock away any they do need,” Consultant child and adolescent psychiatrist at the Priory, Dr Hayley van Zwanenberg, said as per reports.

(With inputs from agencies)

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