Department of Health written question – answered at on 21 January 2016.
Luciana Berger
Shadow Minister (Mental Health)
To ask the Secretary of State for Health, how many people under 18 have been admitted to hospital as a result of self-harm in each year since 2010.
Alistair Burt
The Minister of State, Department of Health
While information on the number of children and young people admitted to hospital as a result of self-harm is not available, the table below shows the total number of admissions in each year from 2009-10 to 2014-15.
The table provides a count of finished admission episodes with an external cause of self-harm and a patient age between 0-17 years for 2009-10 to 2014-15. This is a count of admissions, not people as the same person may have been discharged on more than one occasion during the same year.
Year | 2009-10 | 2010-11 | 2011-12 | 2012-13 | 2013-14 | 2014-15 |
Admissions | 12,944 | 13,995 | 13,231 | 14,780 | 19,577 | 19,647 |
Source Hospital Episode Statistics data
In 2013, specific guidance around the recording of self-harm codes on patients admitted via accident and emergency was issued to all providers. This may explain the increase between 2012-13 and 2013-14; which means that figures between these two years cannot be fairly compared.
Secretary of State was originally the title given to the two officials who conducted the Royal Correspondence under Elizabeth I. Now it is the title held by some of the more important Government Ministers, for example the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs.
