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Self-harm: Harm reduction

6 mins read
There are 150,000 hospital admissions involving self-harm in children each year in the UK, but not enough is known about why they do it. Mike George investigates.

Sixteen-year-old Christine has been self-harming for more than seven years. She's burned and cut herself, suffered from bulimia, banged her head repeatedly, dislocated both knees and swallowed a variety of harmful substances. "More than once I really tried to kill myself," she admits.

Christine explains that although she had a social worker, mainly because of her family's fears for her safety, she did not really start to get help until she was admitted to a paediatric ward about 10 months ago.

"When I was there, I told the nurses I couldn't do this any more," she says. "I wanted to find a way of stopping. So the nurses, my social worker, a psychiatrist and a nurse consultant had a meeting and decided I should start seeing the specialist consultant regularly, and go to meetings with a group of young people who self-harm.

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