Discipline of Psychiatry and Mental Health, University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia.
Discipline of Psychiatry and Mental Health, University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia; School of Social Sciences, University of Adelaide, South Australia, Australia.
J Affect Disord. 2022 Aug 1;310:279-283. doi: 10.1016/j.jad.2022.05.050. Epub 2022 May 12.
Childhood self-harm is rare but increasing in frequency. Little is known about risk factors specifically for self-harm in preteen children.
We examined self-harm thoughts and behaviours in children aged 3-14 years in association with parental and community-level risk factors, using a large general population-based record linkage sample (n = 74,479).
Parental factors were strongly associated with childhood self-harm, with over three-quarters of children with self-harm having a parent with a history of mental disorder and/or criminal offending. Community-level factors (socioeconomic deprivation, remote or regional location, and neighbourhood crime rate) were not associated with childhood self-harm after adjustment for confounding factors.
Measures of self-harm thoughts and behaviours derived from administrative data likely underestimate the prevalence of self-harm in the population.
Intergenerational transmission of risk factors is likely an important contributor to childhood self-harm.
儿童期自伤行为虽罕见但发生率却在不断增加。对于青少年儿童自伤的风险因素,我们知之甚少。
我们通过对 3-14 岁儿童的自伤思想和行为进行研究,结合父母和社区层面的风险因素,利用一个基于大型一般人群的记录链接样本(n=74479)进行调查。
父母因素与儿童期自伤密切相关,超过四分之三的自伤儿童的父母有精神障碍和/或犯罪记录。在调整了混杂因素后,社区层面的因素(社会经济剥夺、偏远或地区位置和邻里犯罪率)与儿童期自伤无关。
行政数据中自伤思想和行为的测量方法可能低估了人群中自伤的流行率。
风险因素的代际传递可能是儿童期自伤的一个重要因素。