Hospitalizations for suicide attempts and self-harm are rising sharply among adolescent girls and young women, study finds

The study confirms the field observations of healthcare workers who have been warning in recent years of a deterioration in their mental health.

Hospitalizations for suicide attempts and self-mutilation have increased sharply over the last 15 years among adolescents and young women, according to a study conducted by the Ministry of Health and Public Health France and published Thursday May 16. This increase has been very marked since the end of the Covid epidemic.

The study, which is based on data from the national health system, confirms the field observations of healthcare workers who have been warning in recent years of a deterioration in the mental health of adolescents and particularly adolescent girls. Concretely, hospitalizations in medicine and surgery departments for suicide attempts (mostly taking a cocktail of medications) or for self-mutilation (such as scarification and burns) are particularly increasing among young girls aged 10 at 14.

Indeed, in 2021-2022, these hospitalizations increased by 71% compared to the average for the period 2010-2019, according to the study. This increase in hospitalizations is 44% for 15-19 year olds and 21% for 20-24 year olds. The figures are even more alarming regarding psychiatric hospitalizations since the increase over the same periods is 246% among girls aged 10-14. Among 15-19 year olds, psychiatric hospitalizations increase by 163%. Among 20-24 year olds, it’s 106%.

These sharp increases concern young girls and young women throughout France, in town and in the countryside, according to the study, and in privileged environments as well as in poor families. Overall, however, residents of disadvantaged municipalities and beneficiaries of complementary solidarity health insurance remain “over-represented among patients hospitalized for self-inflicted acts”. Certain territories are also more concerned, in particular several departments “in Hauts-de-France, Brittany and Burgundy Franche-Comté”which have rates “well above the national average”.

Conversely, the good news is that hospitalizations for suicide attempts and self-mutilation over the last 15 years have declined among people in their thirties, forties and fifties. Among boys and young men aged 10 to 24, we observe a “stability over 16 years of rates at levels well below those of young girls”. “Nearly 85,000 people were hospitalized at least once in connection with a self-inflicted act in 2022, 64% of them are women. Half of these people were hospitalized in psychiatry”specifies the study.