{"id":38153,"date":"2020-10-07T09:22:35","date_gmt":"2020-10-07T08:22:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cupblog.bluefusesystems.com\/?p=38153"},"modified":"2020-10-07T15:13:38","modified_gmt":"2020-10-07T14:13:38","slug":"timing-of-teenage-growth-spurt-sheds-light-on-boys-risk-of-self-harm","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.cambridge.org\/core\/blog\/2020\/10\/07\/timing-of-teenage-growth-spurt-sheds-light-on-boys-risk-of-self-harm\/","title":{"rendered":"Timing of teenage growth spurt sheds light on boys\u2019 risk of self-harm"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/div>\n

There is evidence that self-harm is becoming more common among young people. It\u2019s therefore increasingly important to identify the factors associated with self-harm so that help can be provided earlier to young people who may be most at risk. An Open Access paper<\/a> published in the journal Epidemiology and Psychiatric Sciences<\/a><\/em> showcases the latest findings.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

We already know that girls who experience earlier puberty are at a higher risk of self-harm. However, until now, the evidence for whether the timing of puberty is associated with self-harm in boys has been less clear. This is because most previous studies have focused only on girls, or not looked at boys and girls separately. Many studies have also used subjective measures of when puberty starts \u2013 for example asking young people when they believe their pubertal development started compared to their peers \u2013 which might not be accurate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Our study is the first to investigate pubertal timing and self-harm using an objective measure of pubertal timing in boys: the teenage \u2018growth spurt\u2019. We hope that our results will help identify boys, as well as girls, who may be at higher risk of self-harm, so that they can access earlier support.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What we did<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

As young people move through adolescence, they experience a growth spurt, when their height increases sharply over a relatively short period of time. The point in time when their height is increasing at the fastest rate is known as their peak height velocity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We calculated age at peak height velocity from height measurements taken from 5,000 participants in the Children of the 90s (ALSPAC) study<\/a>, when they attended research clinics during childhood and adolescence. The average age at peak height velocity was 13.5 years in boys and 11.8 years in girls.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We also looked at the self-report questionnaires which participants completed at age 16 and 21 years, to assess whether there were reports of self-harm. One in 10 boys and a quarter of girls reported having self-harmed at age 16 years. By the age of 21, the proportion of males who reported having ever self-harmed was 28 per cent, and the proportion of females was 35 per cent.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What we found and what this means<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

For both males and females, the proportion of participants reporting self-harm was highest among those with early peak height velocity and lowest among those with late peak height velocity. For females, experiencing peak height velocity one year earlier was associated with a 15 per cent increase in the odds of self-harm at age 16 years; for males it was associated with a 28 per cent increase. While these findings don\u2019t necessarily mean earlier pubertal timing causes <\/em>later self-harm, they show that this relatively common event is associated with large changes in risk.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The next steps will be to identify the mechanisms underlying the association. These might be biological factors like brain development or hormone changes, or psychosocial factors like bullying or substance use. Once we understand more about why boys and girls who experience earlier puberty are more likely to self-harm, interventions can be designed and delivered to help reduce this risk.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The paper “Pubertal timing and self-harm: a prospective cohort analysis of males and females<\/a><\/em>“, by Elystan Roberts, Carol Joinson, David Gunnell, Abigail Fraser and Becky Mars, is available Open Access.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There is evidence that self-harm is becoming more common among young people. It\u2019s therefore increasingly important to identify the factors associated with self-harm so that help can be provided earlier to young people who may be most at risk. An Open Access paper published in the journal Epidemiology and Psychiatric Sciences showcases the latest findings. We […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":685,"featured_media":38158,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":true,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6129,2255,1,20],"tags":[255,254,8039,8038],"coauthors":[8037],"class_list":["post-38153","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-global-health","category-medicine-health-science","category-news","category-psych","tag-epidemiology-and-psychiatric-sciences","tag-eps","tag-puberty","tag-selfharm"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cambridge.org\/core\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38153","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cambridge.org\/core\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cambridge.org\/core\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cambridge.org\/core\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/685"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cambridge.org\/core\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=38153"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.cambridge.org\/core\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38153\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":38162,"href":"https:\/\/www.cambridge.org\/core\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38153\/revisions\/38162"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cambridge.org\/core\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/38158"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cambridge.org\/core\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=38153"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cambridge.org\/core\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=38153"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cambridge.org\/core\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=38153"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cambridge.org\/core\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=38153"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}