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Growth in emergency department self-harm or suicidal ideation presentations in young people: Comparing trends before and since the COVID-19 first wave in New South Wales, Australia

INTRODUCTION: Self-harm presentations in children and young people have increased internationally over the last decade. The COVID-19 pandemic has the potential to worsen these trends. OBJECTIVE: To describe trends in emergency department self-harm or suicidal ideation presentations for children and...

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Autores principales: Sara, Grant, Wu, Jianyun, Uesi, John, Jong, Nancy, Perkes, Iain, Knight, Katherine, O’Leary, Fenton, Trudgett, Carla, Bowden, Michael
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: SAGE Publications 2022
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9791324/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35266405
http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/00048674221082518
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author Sara, Grant
Wu, Jianyun
Uesi, John
Jong, Nancy
Perkes, Iain
Knight, Katherine
O’Leary, Fenton
Trudgett, Carla
Bowden, Michael
author_facet Sara, Grant
Wu, Jianyun
Uesi, John
Jong, Nancy
Perkes, Iain
Knight, Katherine
O’Leary, Fenton
Trudgett, Carla
Bowden, Michael
author_sort Sara, Grant
collection PubMed
description INTRODUCTION: Self-harm presentations in children and young people have increased internationally over the last decade. The COVID-19 pandemic has the potential to worsen these trends. OBJECTIVE: To describe trends in emergency department self-harm or suicidal ideation presentations for children and young people in New South Wales before and since the COVID-19 pandemic. METHODS: We studied presentations for self-harm or suicidal ideation by 10- to 24-year-olds to New South Wales emergency departments, using interrupted time series analysis to compare annualised growth before COVID (2015 to February 2020) and since COVID (March 2020 to June 2021). Subgroup analyses compared age group, gender, triage category, rurality and disadvantage. Time series decomposition via generalised additive models identified long-term, seasonal and short-term trends. RESULTS: Self-harm or suicidal ideation presentations by young people in New South Wales increased by 8.4% per annum pre-COVID. Growth accelerated since COVID, to 19.2% per annum, primarily due to increased presentations by females aged 13–17 years (47.1% per annum since COVID, from 290 per 10,000 in 2019 to 466 per 10,000 in 2021). Presentations in males aged 10–24 years did not increase since COVID (105.4 per 10,000 in 2019, 109.8 per 10,000 in 2021) despite growing 9.9% per annum before COVID. Presentation rates accelerated significantly in socio-economically advantaged areas. Presentations in children and adolescents were strongly linked to school semesters. CONCLUSION: Emergency department self-harm or suicidal ideation presentations by New South Wales young people grew steadily before COVID. Understanding the sustained increase remains a priority. Growth has increased since COVID particularly for adolescent females, but not among adolescent males. Surprisingly, the largest post-COVID increases in annual growth occurred in socio-economically advantaged and urban regions. The COVID-19 pandemic appears to have added new challenges, particularly in females in the developmentally critical early adolescent and teenage years.
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spelling pubmed-97913242022-12-27 Growth in emergency department self-harm or suicidal ideation presentations in young people: Comparing trends before and since the COVID-19 first wave in New South Wales, Australia Sara, Grant Wu, Jianyun Uesi, John Jong, Nancy Perkes, Iain Knight, Katherine O’Leary, Fenton Trudgett, Carla Bowden, Michael Aust N Z J Psychiatry Articles INTRODUCTION: Self-harm presentations in children and young people have increased internationally over the last decade. The COVID-19 pandemic has the potential to worsen these trends. OBJECTIVE: To describe trends in emergency department self-harm or suicidal ideation presentations for children and young people in New South Wales before and since the COVID-19 pandemic. METHODS: We studied presentations for self-harm or suicidal ideation by 10- to 24-year-olds to New South Wales emergency departments, using interrupted time series analysis to compare annualised growth before COVID (2015 to February 2020) and since COVID (March 2020 to June 2021). Subgroup analyses compared age group, gender, triage category, rurality and disadvantage. Time series decomposition via generalised additive models identified long-term, seasonal and short-term trends. RESULTS: Self-harm or suicidal ideation presentations by young people in New South Wales increased by 8.4% per annum pre-COVID. Growth accelerated since COVID, to 19.2% per annum, primarily due to increased presentations by females aged 13–17 years (47.1% per annum since COVID, from 290 per 10,000 in 2019 to 466 per 10,000 in 2021). Presentations in males aged 10–24 years did not increase since COVID (105.4 per 10,000 in 2019, 109.8 per 10,000 in 2021) despite growing 9.9% per annum before COVID. Presentation rates accelerated significantly in socio-economically advantaged areas. Presentations in children and adolescents were strongly linked to school semesters. CONCLUSION: Emergency department self-harm or suicidal ideation presentations by New South Wales young people grew steadily before COVID. Understanding the sustained increase remains a priority. Growth has increased since COVID particularly for adolescent females, but not among adolescent males. Surprisingly, the largest post-COVID increases in annual growth occurred in socio-economically advantaged and urban regions. The COVID-19 pandemic appears to have added new challenges, particularly in females in the developmentally critical early adolescent and teenage years. SAGE Publications 2022-03-10 2023-01 /pmc/articles/PMC9791324/ /pubmed/35266405 http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/00048674221082518 Text en © The Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Psychiatrists 2022 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/) which permits non-commercial use, reproduction and distribution of the work without further permission provided the original work is attributed as specified on the SAGE and Open Access pages (https://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/open-access-at-sage).
spellingShingle Articles
Sara, Grant
Wu, Jianyun
Uesi, John
Jong, Nancy
Perkes, Iain
Knight, Katherine
O’Leary, Fenton
Trudgett, Carla
Bowden, Michael
Growth in emergency department self-harm or suicidal ideation presentations in young people: Comparing trends before and since the COVID-19 first wave in New South Wales, Australia
title Growth in emergency department self-harm or suicidal ideation presentations in young people: Comparing trends before and since the COVID-19 first wave in New South Wales, Australia
title_full Growth in emergency department self-harm or suicidal ideation presentations in young people: Comparing trends before and since the COVID-19 first wave in New South Wales, Australia
title_fullStr Growth in emergency department self-harm or suicidal ideation presentations in young people: Comparing trends before and since the COVID-19 first wave in New South Wales, Australia
title_full_unstemmed Growth in emergency department self-harm or suicidal ideation presentations in young people: Comparing trends before and since the COVID-19 first wave in New South Wales, Australia
title_short Growth in emergency department self-harm or suicidal ideation presentations in young people: Comparing trends before and since the COVID-19 first wave in New South Wales, Australia
title_sort growth in emergency department self-harm or suicidal ideation presentations in young people: comparing trends before and since the covid-19 first wave in new south wales, australia
topic Articles
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9791324/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35266405
http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/00048674221082518
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