Authors of a study at the Children’s Hospital of Eastern Ontario in Ottawa say that 2009 was a turning point for increased self-harm among teens in Ontario. Since then, says Dr. William Gardner, the incidence of cuts and ingestion of drugs has increased 78 percent against previous years. The statistics represent visits to emergency departments. In a Canadian Press story Thursday, Dr. Gardner pondered the impact of such things as the cell phone, which arrived in 2007, and social media cyber-bullying. “Engagement with social media could lead to increased rates of self-harm, at least for vulnerable adolescents,” Gardner said. “This could happen in several ways: by normalizing self-harm, by triggering it, by getting teens to emulate self-harming peers, or by exposing youths to cyber-bullying.” However, he said, social media may also benefit some struggling teens by providing them with a way to “escape social isolation or find encouragement to seek treatment.” It could also be that efforts to destigmatize mental illness in the period studied have encouraged teens and their families to seek help when they need it, Gardner said. “We have to say that if kids who are in trouble are more likely to come to seek care, that’s good. It’s sad that there’s all those kids (who are struggling) but better to know about it than not,” he said.
