Self-harm is more common than most people realize, particularly among young people. Roughly 1 in 5 adolescents worldwide will self-injure at some point during their teenage years, with a global lifetime prevalence of about 19% to 20%. Among adults, the lifetime rate drops to around 5%. These numbers likely undercount the true scale, since most episodes never reach a hospital or clinic.
How Common It Is Among Teenagers
A global meta-analysis combining studies from multiple countries found that 19% of adolescents report self-injurious behavior at some point in their lives, and 20% specifically report non-suicidal self-injury. The rates vary by region. European countries report the highest adolescent lifetime prevalence at around 21%, while Oceania (Australia, New Zealand, and Pacific Island nations) reports the lowest at roughly 14%. In England, surveys have found a prevalence of about 18.8%. One study in the Azores recorded rates as high as 29.5%.
These numbers make self-harm one of the most common behavioral health concerns in adolescence, comparable in prevalence to depression and anxiety disorders in the same age group.
Rates in Adults
The American Psychological Association puts the adult lifetime rate of self-injury at about 5%. This sharp drop from adolescent rates reflects a well-documented pattern: self-harm typically begins in the early to mid-teen years and, for most people, decreases or stops by early adulthood. That said, a meaningful number of adults do continue or begin self-harming later in life, and they are even less likely than teenagers to disclose it or seek help.
Gender Differences Vary by Region
Globally, female adolescents are about 1.6 times more likely to self-harm than male adolescents. In community samples across 17 countries, 21.3% of girls reported self-injury compared to 13.7% of boys. But this gender gap is not universal.
In North America, the disparity is especially pronounced: 20.2% of girls versus 8.9% of boys. Europe shows a similar pattern, with 19.4% of girls and 12.6% of boys affected. In Asia, however, the rates are nearly identical between sexes, with 24.1% of girls and 24.8% of boys reporting self-harm. In some Asian samples, boys actually reported higher rates than girls. This pattern suggests that the gender gap seen in Western countries may reflect cultural and social factors rather than something inherent about sex and self-injury.
LGBTQ Youth Face Higher Rates
Sexual and gender minority adolescents are disproportionately affected. Research comparing LGBTQ and heterosexual adolescents found a lifetime self-harm prevalence of 47% in the LGBTQ group, compared to 23% among heterosexual peers. Looking at just the previous 12 months, 45% of LGBTQ adolescents reported self-harm versus 18% of heterosexual adolescents. That translates to roughly 4 in 10 LGBTQ teens self-harming in a given year, compared to about 2 in 10 of their heterosexual peers.
What Self-Harm Typically Looks Like
Self-harm takes different forms, and the most visible type, cutting, is not always the most common. Among young people who self-injure, hitting oneself is reported by about 47% and cutting or carving skin by about 45%. Burning, inserting objects under the skin, and skin-picking are less frequent, reported by roughly 13%, 15%, and 8% respectively.
The methods differ by gender. About 64% of girls who self-harm report cutting or carving, making it the most common method among females. For boys, hitting themselves is the dominant method, reported by 55%. Cutting is far less common in boys, at about 15%. This distinction matters because self-harm in boys often goes unrecognized: a teenager punching a wall or hitting their own head may not be identified as self-injury in the way visible cuts on an arm would be.
Most Cases Go Unreported
Official statistics based on hospital visits dramatically undercount the real prevalence of self-harm. Research has found that only about 12.6% of self-harm episodes among 15 and 16-year-olds result in a hospital visit. The vast majority of young people who self-injure either manage their injuries alone, tell a friend, or rely on other informal support. In those cases, the self-harm is never formally recorded.
Even when young people do interact with professionals, their injuries are not always documented. Studies have found that visible self-harm wounds were sometimes ignored by adults in positions of authority and not recorded, even when the young person was directly asked about them. This means that prevalence figures based on clinical data capture only a fraction of the actual picture, and community-based surveys consistently produce much higher numbers.
Where Rates Are Highest and Lowest
Self-harm rates among young people aged 10 to 24 vary dramatically by geography. In 2021, the highest incidence rates were found in high-income North America (about 223 per 100,000 adolescents), southern Latin America (209 per 100,000), and Australasia (181 per 100,000). The lowest incidence was in tropical Latin America, at about 24 per 100,000.
Mortality from self-harm tells a somewhat different story. The highest death rates among young people are in southern Sub-Saharan Africa, Eastern Europe, and high-income North America. The lowest mortality rates are in North Africa and the Middle East. This disconnect between incidence and mortality reflects differences in the lethality of methods used, access to emergency medical care, and how self-harm is defined and recorded across cultures.
Global Trends Over Time
Despite growing public awareness and media attention, the overall global burden of self-harm has actually declined slightly since 1990, with age-standardized rates of both disability and mortality dropping by about 0.4% over the three decades through 2021. Forecasting models project this gradual decline to continue through 2050. East Asia has seen the largest decrease in self-harm burden over this period.
The one clear exception is Latin America and the Caribbean, the only world region where self-harm rates have increased. Southern Latin America in particular experienced the largest rise in incidence of any region. These regional trends point to the complex interplay of economic conditions, social stressors, mental health infrastructure, and cultural factors that shape self-harm patterns in different parts of the world.