Factors influencing self-harm thoughts and self-harm behaviours over the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic in the UK: a longitudinal analysis of 49,324 adults

  1. Elise Paul
  2. Daisy Fancourt

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Abstract

There is concern that the COVID-19 pandemic and its aftermath will result in excess suicides by increasing known risk factors such as self-harm, but evidence on how pandemic-related risk factors contribute to changes in these outcomes is lacking.

Aims

To examine how different COVID-19-related adverse experiences and adversity worries contribute to changes in self-harm thoughts and behaviours.

Method

Data from 49,324 UK adults in the UCL COVID-19 Social Study were analysed (1 April 2020 to 17 May 2021). Fixed effects regressions explored associations between weekly within-person variation in five categories of adversity experiences and adversity worries with changes in self-harm thoughts and behaviours across age groups (18-29, 30-44, 45-59, and 60+ years).

Results

26.1% and 7.9% respondents reported self-harm thoughts and behaviours, respectively, at least once over the study period. More adverse experiences were more strongly related to outcomes than worries. The largest specific adversity contributing to increases in both outcomes was having experienced physical or psychological abuse. Financial worries increased the likelihood of both outcomes in most age groups, whilst having had COVID-19 increased the likelihood of both outcomes in young (18-29 years) and middle-aged (45-59 years) adults.

Conclusions

Findings suggest that a significant portion of UK adults may be at increased risk for self-harm thoughts and behaviours during the pandemic. Given the likelihood that the economic and social consequences of the pandemic will accumulate, policy makers can begin adapting evidence-based suicide prevention strategies and other social policies to help mitigate its consequences.

Article activity feed

  1. Version published to 10.1101/2021.02.19.21252050v3 on medRxiv
  2. Version published to 10.1192/bjp.2021.130
  3. Version published to 10.1101/2021.02.19.21252050v2 on medRxiv
  4. ScreenIT

    SciScore for 10.1101/2021.02.19.21252050: (What is this?)

    Please note, not all rigor criteria are appropriate for all manuscripts.

    Table 1: Rigor

    Institutional Review Board StatementIRB: All procedures involving human subjects were approved by the UCL Ethics Committee.
    Consent: Written informed consent was obtained from all participants.
    Randomizationnot detected.
    Blindingnot detected.
    Power Analysisnot detected.
    Sex as a biological variablenot detected.

    Table 2: Resources

    No key resources detected.

    Results from OddPub: We did not detect open data. We also did not detect open code. Researchers are encouraged to share open data when possible (see Nature blog).

    Results from LimitationRecognizer: An explicit section about the limitations of the techniques employed in this study was not found. We encourage authors to address study limitations.

    Results from TrialIdentifier: No clinical trial numbers were referenced.

    Results from Barzooka: We did not find any issues relating to the usage of bar graphs.

    Results from JetFighter: We did not find any issues relating to colormaps.

    Results from rtransparent:
    • Thank you for including a conflict of interest statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
    • Thank you for including a funding statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
    • No protocol registration statement was detected.

    About SciScore

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  5. Version published to 10.1101/2021.02.19.21252050v1 on medRxiv