Student Self-harm: Warning signs, risks & school responses

The headlines are sickeningly familiar:

“Suicide survivor told to kill herself by online trolls”

“Instagram owns up: ‘Not where we need to be’ on self-harm”

“TikTok linked to dozens of deaths worldwide, as teens post suicide videos and film killer stunts”

And now, a study confirms what many of us have observed first-hand: that our students are being routinely exposed to self-harm content online. Released by New Zealand’s independent online safety organisation Netsafe, its findings highlight the urgent need for school communities to address heightening online risks to students’ health and wellbeing. A further concern is that this study was released before the coronavirus pandemic, which experts warn will likely have a significant impact on student mental health and wellbeing. 

In Netsafe's study of over two thousand students, researchers found that among 13 to 17-year-olds

• One in five had accessed self-harm material
• 17% had viewed “how to suicide” guides
• Over a third had seen violent images online
• 27% had viewed “hateful content”
• 15% had searched for “ways to be very thin”

Even more alarming, statistics from around the English-speaking world confirm a massive uptick in the incidence of self-injury among young people - especially girls.

In Australia, the number of young people seeking help for suicide and self-harm doubled between 2000 and 2015, according to a report from the Australian Health Ministry. One in 10 young Australians had engaged in some form of self-harm. Among girls aged 16-17, the figure is a shocking one in four.

It has been observed that, effectively, every high school teacher is in contact with a self-harmer every day.

At the most extreme end of self-inflicted injury is suicide. Recent figures show around eight children and young people take their own lives each week in Australia - a ten-year high.

Schools Talk Cyber Safety: Watch school leaders discuss how cyber safety programs can help support student wellbeing & pastoral care

How is “self-harm” defined?

According to the Mayo Clinic, self-harm or self-injury is the act of deliberately harming one’s own body, typically by cutting, burning, self-hitting, piercing the skin or inserting objects under the skin, as a way to cope with emotional pain, intense anger and/or frustration. 

Self-harmers do not usually intend to suicide, but the act of self-injury may be a precursor to “more serious and even fatal self-aggressive actions.”

Many parents don't realise how abundant and easy to access content featuring or referencing self-harm is on social media. Young people will often use social media platforms such as TikTok and Instagram as places to document their mental health journey, including showing incidents involving self-harm or even hospitalisation."

— Jordan Foster, clinical psychologist & cyber expert

Does viewing or posting self-harm content online lead to self-harm behaviour offline?

The short answer is we simply don’t know. 

But there is a growing consensus that seeking out such material online is a cry for help.

Notes Elliot Taylor, executive director of the NZ-based mental health project Live for Tomorrow, “These are young people who are experiencing distress in their lives and they don’t have acceptable avenues to get help,” he said. 

“But what they do have is an Instagram account that they’re really familiar with. They use it every day, it’s the room they hang out in.

“The real issue is not that young people are searching for distressing content,” he said. “The real issue that young people are distressed and they don’t have anywhere to access proper help, and so they post it online.”

Of special concern in the Netsafe study were the 11% of participants who said that, when they’d seen something upsetting online, they hadn’t spoken to anyone about it. This was the highest-risk group, according to Netsafe chief executive Martin Cocker.

Research regarding the impact of viewing content of this nature is still in its infancy but individual factors relating to the viewer, and the circumstances under which they saw the content, are likely to influence this. Some young people may experience detrimental impacts due to viewing content that is personally distressing, encouraging, or triggering for them." 
- Jordan Foster

Linewize School Manager provides real-time alerts & insights to help you identify at-risk students 

What can schools do to help?

Mental health concerns among Australian and New Zealand youth have risen sharply over the past seven years. Yet, “strategies to prevent youth self-harm, suicide and rates of depression don’t seem to be working enormously well – because rates continue to go up,” notes Dr Paul Badcock, senior lecturer at the Centre for Youth Mental Health at the University of Melbourne.

Psychologist and self-harm expert Dr Sarah Stanford points to the fact that that suicide and self-harm remain “taboo topics in schools” - perhaps on the mistaken belief that talking about the problem will encourage it among the young and impressionable.
She cites emerging evidence that school-based self-harm and suicide prevention programs reduce dangerous thoughts or actions while improving knowledge and increasing help-seeking behaviour. Perhaps not surprisingly, it is open conversation and education that could form a key part of a school’s response.

Putting technology into the hands of those who need it

Accessing self-harm content online, evidence suggests, signals a student is at psychological risk. How much at risk, and whether that risk involves troubling thoughts or troubling actions, is a tougher question.

However, the ability to identify those students who show a pattern of searching, viewing or posting to self-harm sites is a key way for schools to identify moments of care and help to address this wellbeing issue. Implementing technology to provide both visibility of student online behaviour and meaningful reporting of that behaviour including at-risk students, is the first step to an early-warning system for schools.

The second step involves ensuring the technology can sit in the hands of those providing the care - such as school leadership and pastoral care/wellbeing staff. Empowering the staff best suited to delivering care with timely insights, helps ensure the best possible support of student wellbeing.

Linewize's powerful tools can flag at-risk student users with accuracy, and deliver that information to wellbeing staff, making it possible for schools to provide appropriate support before more serious issues arise - while also supporting parents with cyber-safety products, education and resources.

If you would like to discuss how Linewize can help support your student wellbeing and duty of care then click here to arrange an online consultation.