Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, how many (a) boys and (b) girls aged between 10 and 17 have been admitted to hospital for self-harm in each year since May 2010.

The information is not available in the format requested. However, data is collected according to the financial year from April to March.

Data for how many boys and girls between 10 and 17 who have been admitted to hospital for self-harm each year since April 2010 is outlined in the table below.

Source: Hospital Episode Statistics (HES), Health and Social Care Information Centre

This data should not be interpreted as a count of people as the same person may have been admitted on more than one occasion. Reference should be made to the notes when interpreting the data.

In January 2014 the Government launched the Mental Health Action Plan, Closing the Gap: Priorities for essential change in mental health. Of the 25 actions in the plan, one offers a commitment to change the way front line services respond to self-harm and to ensure that no-one experiencing a mental health crisis should ever be turned away from services.

In the revised Public Health Outcomes Framework we have introduced a new indicator that is specifically about self-harm. Under this indicator, we will measure:

- attendances at emergency departments for self-harm per 100,000 population

- percentage of attendances at emergency departments for self-harm that received a psychosocial assessment.

This two-part indicator helps us not only understand the prevalence of self-harm but also how emergency departments are responding. This information can then inform future commissioning.

The Department has invested £54 million into the Children and Young People’s Improving Access to Psychological Therapies programme (CYP IAPT) over 2011-15/16. The CYP IAPT programme is designed to improve access to evidence-based psychological therapies for a range of issues, including self-harm, and the CYP IAPT curriculum includes training in evidence-based treatments for young people who self-harm.

In December the Government announced an investment of £30 million per year from 2015-16 to 2019-20 to improve services for children and young people with mental health problems. This includes improving access for young people who self-harm to services in their communities with properly trained teams, making hospital admission a last resort.

The Government is also investing £30 million in 2015-16 to improve psychiatric liaison in general hospitals. This will help to ensure young people who present at hospital after self-harming that could be the result of an underlying mental health condition are referred for assessment.

Notes:

Data is not available on the number of girls and boys aged under 18 years who received hospital treatment for self-harm each year since 2010 who were offered a comprehensive assessment of their physical, psychological and social needs in line with the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence guidelines, and accepted that offer, broken down by each NHS trust in England.

¹Finished admission episodes. A finished admission episode (FAE) is the first period of inpatient care under one consultant within one healthcare provider. FAEs are counted against the year in which the admission episode finishes. Admissions do not represent the number of inpatients, as a person may have more than one admission within the year.

²Cause Code. A supplementary code that indicates the nature of any external cause of injury, poisoning or other adverse effects. Only the first external cause code which is coded within the episode is counted in Hospital Episode Statistics (HES). The cause codes used to identify episodes of self-harm were:

A supplementary code that indicates the nature of any external cause of injury, poisoning or other adverse effects. Only the first external cause code which is coded within the episode is counted in HES.

The cause codes used to identify episodes of self-harm were:

X60 – Intentional self-poisoning by and exposure to nonopioid analgesics, antipryretics and antirheumatics

X61 – Intentional self-poisoning by and exposure to antiepileptic, sedative-hypnotic, antiparkinsom and psychotropic drugs, note elsewhere classified

X62 – Intentional self-poisoning by and exposure to narcotics and psychodysleptics [hallucinogens], not elsewhere classified

X63 – Intentional self-poisoning by and exposure to other drugs acting on the automatic nervous system

X64 – Intentional self-poisoning by and exposure to other and unspecified drugs, medicaments and biological substances

X65 - Intentional self-poisoning by and exposure to alcohol

X66 - Intentional self-poisoning by and exposure to organic solvents and halogenated hydrocarbons and their vapours

X67 - Intentional self-poisoning by and exposure to other gases and vapours

X68 - Intentional self-poisoning by and exposure to pesticides

X69 - Intentional self-poisoning by and exposure to other and unspecified chemicals and noxious substances

X70 - Intentional self-harm by hanging, strangulation and suffocation

X71 - Intentional self-harm by drowning and submersion

X72 - Intentional self-harm by handgun discharge

X73 - Intentional self-harm by rifle, shotgun and larger firearm discharge

X74 - Intentional self-harm by other and unspecified firearm discharge

X75 - Intentional self-harm by explosive material

X76 - Intentional self-harm by smoke, fire and flames

X77 - Intentional self-harm by steam, hot vapours and hot objects

X78 - Intentional self-harm by sharp object

X79 - Intentional self-harm by blunt object

X80 - Intentional self-harm by jumping from a high place

X81 - Intentional self-harm by jumping or lying before moving object

X82 - Intentional self-harm by crashing of motor vehicle

X83 - Intentional self-harm by other specified means

X84 - Intentional self-harm by unspecified means