Some 8,600 people presented at hospitals due to deliberate self-harm in 2005 but the total number of people who self-harm could be closer to 70,000, a Dublin conference on suicide prevention heard yesterday.
The 8,600 people presented at hospitals on 10,800 occasions, a decrease of 3 per cent on the previous year, according to Prof Ivan Perry, director of the National Parasuicide Registry in Cork.
He told the National Office for Suicide Prevention's (NOSP) conference that the most common method of self-harm was taking an overdose, followed by cutting the body. Alcohol was involved in 46 per cent of male cases and 38 per cent of female cases.
Deliberate self-harm was practised by more women than men and was "predominantly an urban phenomenon", Prof Perry said. He said it was easier to access hospitals in urban areas but this did not explain the significant urban/rural difference.
Cork city had the highest male rate of self-harm in 2005, at 333 cases per 100,000 while Cork county had the lowest, at 96 per 100,000.
Prof Perry expressed particular concern at the high rate of self-cutting, and said effective interventions must be a priority for this "extremely vulnerable subgroup".
NOSP director Geoff Day said international research had found the number of people who deliberately harmed themselves was "four, five, six times" higher than the number of hospital presentations.
"There's a lot of hidden self-harm that never even gets to the accident and emergency department, so we have a real job of work to do in terms of trying to reach those people," he said.
Tim O'Malley, Minister of State at the Department of Health, blamed the Government and society for the fact that social issues such as alcohol abuse and low self-esteem among the young had not been adequately addressed.
Asked whose fault it was that such problems had not been resolved, he said: "It's the Government's fault obviously, but it's also society's. It's an educational problem."
Mr O'Malley said a target had been set to reduce the incidence of suicide by 10 per cent by 2010. The rate of repeated self-harm should be reduced by 5 per cent by 2010 and by a further 5 per cent by 2016, he added.
The provisional figure for suicides in 2005 was 431, and the level of youth suicide here is the fifth-highest in Europe. Men under 35 account for 40 per cent of all suicides.
The conference also heard details of a national mental health awareness campaign that will begin next month.
Derek Chambers of the NOSP said this would be the first such campaign to target the entire population. The multimedia campaign will begin by publishing the results of a survey on public awareness of mental health.
Yesterday's conference heard that a survey by transition year students at St Kevin's College in Finglas, Dublin, found that 67 per cent of teenagers viewed depression "as a weakness rather than an illness".
