Trigger warning: suicide, self-harm
The Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA) reported that in 2022 close to 1,500 people died of intentional self-harm, from those aged below 30.
Intentional self-harm is most commonly regarded by authorities as direct injury to one’s own skin tissues without a suicidal intention.
Other terms like cutting, self-injury and self-mutilation are forms of self-harm usually using sharp objects or by scratching, hitting, or burning.
The PSA said of the 3,117 deaths caused by intentional self-harm in 2022, 1,407 were Filipinos below 30 years old and the largest number of intentional self-harm cases was from ages 20 to 24 at 503 deaths, followed by 15 to 19 at 428 deaths, said a report from Business Mirror.
A study by the House of Representatives Congressional Policy and Budget Research Department released in February 2023 noted that the mental health of young Filipinos has been at risk by various behaviors and circumstances, exacerbated by the pandemic, the report said.
The study noted that the crisis hotline of the National Center for Mental Health (MCMH) got a total of 11,017 calls in 2020, with 1,322 or 12 percent of the total as suicide-related.
These calls increased by 307 percent in June 2021, accounting for 2,743 suicide-related calls of the 8,949 total calls received in the first semester of 2021.
The country was released from lockdowns and the pandemic was declared as over only in late 2022.
This trend worsened with the share of high-risk calls reaching 33.4 percent or 4,978 of the 14,903 calls by September 2021, majority of them from Regions 3, 4 and the NCR with more females than males and mostly from ages 18 to 30, the report added.
By the first quarter of 2022, the PSA said the highest number of deaths caused by intentional self-harm reached 941 at 327 in January then in March at 309 deaths and February at 305 deaths, PSA said adding that by the second quarter deaths from intentional self-harm reached 703 and by the fourth quarter 677 deaths.
The thin line between suicide and self-harm
The exact bounds of self-harm are imprecise, but generally exclude tissue damage that occurs as an unintended side-effect of eating disorders or substance abuse and societally-acceptable body modification like tattoos and piercings.
Although self-harm is non-suicidal, it may still be life-threatening and most of those who do self-harm are more likely to die by suicides. However, only a minority of those into self-harm are suicidal, according to Wikipedia.
A desire for self-harm usually is a symptom of personality disorder (including those with mental disorder), depression, anxiety disorders, substance abuse, mood disorders, eating disorders, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), schizophrenia, dissociative disorders and people experiencing gender dysphoria.
Self-harm can also occur in high-functioning individuals who have no underlying mental health diagnosis.
The motivations for self-harm vary with some using it as a coping mechanism to provide temporary relief of intense feelings such as anxiety, depression, stress, emotional numbness or a sense of failure.
Self-harm tends to begin in adolescence and is relatively rare in childhood, but the rate has been increasing since the 1980s.
Self-harm can also occur in the elderly population and is the risk of injury and suicide is higher in older people who did self-harm.
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