Study: Self-Harm Not Always a Sign of Serious Mental Health Problems

One of the common ways of expressing deep emotional feelings is self harm. In situations of low self esteem or dealing with traumatic events of life one intentionally damages or injures their body. It is a is an expression of personal distress, rather than an illness.

According to the psychiologist Jonas Bjarehed at the Lund University, it is not appropriate to compare young people who self-harm and adult psychiatric patients who self-harm. Knowledge is needed in order not to over-interpret the behaviour of the young people.

For this study, Jonas Bjarehed and his supervisor Lars Gunnar Lund carried out a survey of 1 000 young people in southern Sweden. They noticed that four out of ten young people had at some time intentionally hurt themselves. 

The data was further broken down by the researchers and it seems that a small minority of the young people self-harm on a regular basis and in a way that can be compared with self-harm in adults with mental health problems.

"It is important that school and health professionals know how to deal with young people who self-harm. They need to react appropriately and not judge all young people alike," says Jonas Bjärehed. "For many of these young people, the behaviour seems to be fairly mild and often of a temporary nature. It may be viewed as a matter of experimentation or problems that are not of a serious nature."

"It is not the first time young people worry those around them with new types of behaviour," he says, giving the examples of the increase in eating disorders in the 1970s and 80s and the 'hysterics', who worried those around them at the turn of the last century by fainting for various reasons.

"Nowadays, we are grappling with the fact that many signs of stress and mental illness appear to be increasing in our society, especially among young people, without us really understanding why. The fact that many young people suffer mental health problems during a time in their lives when they are in the process of becoming adults and developing the skills they need to contribute to society has become a serious public health problem. An important challenge is to understand this trend and the signs of mental illness that we are seeing in young people, in order to be able to take the necessary measures to prevent it or provide help," says Jonas Bjarehed.

Jonas Bjarehed hopes that awareness of self-harm will become as widespread as eating disorders.