Buckley Nicholas A, Noghrehchi Firouzeh, Elliott Rohan A, Wylie Carol, Merwood Nick, Benger Lauren, Brown Jared, Cairns Rose
New South Wales Poisons Information Centre, Sydney Children's Hospitals Network, Sydney, NSW, Australia.
School of Pharmacy, The University of Sydney, Sydney, NSW, Australia.
Aust N Z J Psychiatry. 2025 Jan;59(1):29-39. doi: 10.1177/00048674241291321. Epub 2024 Nov 18.
Self-poisoning is the most common form of hospitalised self-harm in young people and has been increasing over the last decade. The COVID-19 pandemic was associated with further increases in self-harm in adolescents. There are limited data on changes after pandemic restrictions ended. This study aimed to describe recent trends in self-poisoning in young people.
Australia 2018-2023.
A retrospective analysis of self-poisoning calls to Australia's poisons information centres. Intentional poisoning exposures in people aged 5-19 years were included in the main analysis. We also examined intentional poisonings in people aged 20 and over for comparison. We used interrupted time-series analysis to estimate the impact of COVID-19 (March 2020) and 're-opening' (December 2021), when many restrictions were lifted in Australia. We compared effects in the jurisdictions with most disruptions and lockdowns with other jurisdictions.
There were 201,755 self-poisonings documented, 64% female, with 19,946 children (aged 5-14, 9.9%) and 44,388 adolescents (aged 15-19, 22.0%). There was a steep increase in the rate of poisoning in female children and adolescents - with the annual increase being 1.361 (95% confidence interval = [1.074, 1.735]) and 1.154 (95% confidence interval = [1.049, 1.283]) times faster than pre-pandemic trends in these two groups between March 2020 and December 2021. Following relaxation of restrictions, there was a sudden drop and then slow decline in self-poisonings (despite rising COVID-19 infection rates). There was an overall 29.6% increase in intentional poisonings in young people over the study period. This is markedly more pronounced among young females (37.0%) vs males (11.2%). There were substantial jurisdictional variations, with larger increases in Victoria, Tasmania and the Australian Capital Territory.
There has been a marked increase in child and adolescent female self-poisonings over the last 6 years, with increases strongly associated with COVID-19 pandemic restrictions but persisting after their removal.
自我中毒是年轻人住院自残的最常见形式，在过去十年中呈上升趋势。新冠疫情与青少年自残行为的进一步增加有关。关于疫情限制措施结束后的变化数据有限。本研究旨在描述年轻人自我中毒的近期趋势。
2018 - 2023年的澳大利亚。
对澳大利亚毒物信息中心接到的自我中毒求助电话进行回顾性分析。主要分析纳入了5 - 19岁人群的故意中毒暴露情况。我们还对20岁及以上人群的故意中毒情况进行了检查以作比较。我们采用中断时间序列分析来估计新冠疫情（2020年3月）和“重新开放”（2021年12月，当时澳大利亚许多限制措施解除）的影响。我们比较了受干扰和封锁最严重的司法管辖区与其他司法管辖区的影响。
记录在案的自我中毒事件有201,755起，其中64%为女性，包括19,946名儿童（5 - 14岁占9.9%）和44,388名青少年（15 - 19岁占22.0%）。女童和青少年的中毒率急剧上升——在2020年3月至2021年12月期间，这两组人群的年增长率分别比疫情前趋势快1.361倍（95%置信区间 = [1.074, 1.735]）和1.154倍（95%置信区间 = [1.049, 1.283]）。限制措施放宽后，自我中毒事件先是突然下降，然后缓慢减少（尽管新冠感染率上升）。在研究期间，年轻人故意中毒事件总体增加了29.6%。这在年轻女性（37.0%）中比男性（11.2%）更为明显。各司法管辖区存在显著差异，维多利亚州、塔斯马尼亚州和澳大利亚首都地区的增幅更大。
在过去6年中，儿童和青少年女性自我中毒事件显著增加，这种增加与新冠疫情限制措施密切相关，但在措施解除后仍持续存在。
