The findings from the Medical Research Council have been extracted from a longitudinal study of young people's health and wellbeing, which has been following a cohort of 11-year-olds since 1994.
At age 18 to 20 the cohort demonstrated high levels of self-harm. With the 640 young males the self-harm rate was 5.8 per cent, while for the 618 females, the rate was 8.4 per cent.
Robert Young, co-author of the study and a psychologist at the Medical Research Council, said: "One component we found was that social background, deprivation and the social class of the parents also affected self-harm in unemployed young people. Policymakers should concentrate on keeping young people in education and employment, and increase resources to help young self-harmers."
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