Self-harm can be separated into different forms, including unintentional self-harm, self-injurious behavior, non-suicidal self-injurious behavior, suicide attempts, and completed suicide.

Non-suicidal self-injury is the intent to harm yourself without wanting to die.

This includes things like burning, cutting, head banging, or punching a wall.

But this is different from unintentional self-harm where we might see, for instance,

kids with developmental challenges bang their heads, slap themselves, or pick at their skin.

In this episode, we will discuss how to assess, discuss, and treat non-suicidal

self-injury in children and adolescents. Dr. Hanny Flaherty joins us today to help us unpack

this topic. She's an assistant professor and chair of advanced clinical practice at

Yeshiva University. She's also the president and clinical director of the

Collaborative People Clinical Group in New York City, New York.

Welcome to the Carlatte psychiatry podcast. This is another episode from the Child

Psychiatry Team. I'm Dr. Josh Vader, the the editor-in-chief of the Carlat Child Psychiatry Report, and co-author of the Child

Medication Fact Book for Psychiatric Practice, second edition, coming out soon, and prescribing psychotrophics.

And I'm Mayor of Government, a licensed clinical social worker in Southern California with a private

practice.

In a 2017 systematic review, the prevalence of non-suicidal self-injury was about 7.5% to 46.5% for

adolescents, 38.9% for university students, and somewhere between 4 to 23% for adults.

The first incident typically occurs around ages 12 to 13. However, we do not know whether these

numbers have changed with the pandemic.

With such high numbers, you might be wondering why non-suicidal self-injury is so common in kids and adolescents.

Children are drawn to this behavior when they experience emotional pain but cannot control the situation.

The opposite also happens, teens experiencing emotional pain but cannot control the situation. The opposite also happens.

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