Abstract
BackgroundPoisonings are a common cause of morbidity and mortality among adolescents. Yet surveillance data indicating current incidence rates (IRs) and time trends are lacking, making policy development and service planning...
Highlights
Poisoning during adolescence, including self-harm, is a global problem and amongst the most common causes of death at this age.[1, 2] Poisonings leading to death are just the tip of the iceberg[3] with many more resulting in invasive treatment, time off school and long term health effects.[4, 5] Many adolescent self-harm episodes are linked to mental health problems,[6] which are often predictive of mental health problems in adulthood,[7] making adolescence a key window for preventative intervention
Follow-up time was less for those without a poisoning than those with a poisoning (6.50 PY). 1,113 participants died during the study period cause of death was not available. 280,803 participants (21%) were censored during the study period because of leaving the practice contributing data to The Health Improvement Network (THIN) (51% of these were female and 17% were from the most deprived quintile)
Using routine United Kingdom (UK) primary care data we have shown that recorded adolescent poisonings, especially intentional poisonings, have increased substantially over the last 20 years
Summary
Poisoning during adolescence, including self-harm, is a global problem and amongst the most common causes of death at this age.[1, 2] Poisonings leading to death are just the tip of the iceberg[3] with many more resulting in invasive treatment, time off school and long term health effects.[4, 5] Many adolescent self-harm episodes are linked to mental health problems,[6] which are often predictive of mental health problems in adulthood,[7] making adolescence a key window for preventative intervention. Existing studies of adolescent poisoning incidence have important gaps, such as primarily being based solely on admissions or emergency department (ED) visits to individual hospitals.[8,9,10,11,12,13,14,15,16,17,18,19,20,21] This may not capture the full burden of medically-attended poisonings as some never present to hospital[22] and attendees at single hospitals may not represent the wider adolescent population This creates inherent drawbacks in calculating rates because of difficulties identifying appropriate population denominators. Social and psychological support for adolescents should be targeted at more deprived communities and child and adolescent mental health and alcohol support service provision should be commissioned to reflect the changing need
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