Preventing self-harm, suicides among young women urgent, says disease agency

The Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency (KDCA) said Thursday that preventing self-harm and suicide attempts among young women must be treated as an urgent public health priority, citing sharp increases in related injuries and a significant gender gap in mental health risks.

Releasing its annual report, the “Injury Factbook,” the agency said the situation requires immediate policy action rather than simple statistical monitoring. The KDCA analyzes injuries caused by external factors such as accidents and poisoning, using data from in-depth emergency room surveys at 23 hospitals and several discharge injury surveys.

According to the report, most injuries from self-harm or suicide attempts among adolescents and young adults involved poisoning.

Among poisoning-related injury cases in the 15 to 24 year-age group, 91.3 percent were linked to self-harm or suicide attempts. Within that group, women accounted for 76.2 percent.

The agency said the worrying trend underscores a need for gender-specific policy responses because self-harm among young women frequently stems from mental health challenges.

An additional KDCA analysis of child and adolescent injury cases found that “psychiatric issues” were cited as the reason for self-harm or suicide attempts in 60.3 percent of cases involving girls, compared with 45.1 percent among boys.

Other national data show that mental health indicators are worsening more rapidly among young women. A survey of 15,098 young adults aged 19 to 34 by the Office for Government Policy Coordination found that 10.7 percent of young women exhibited depressive symptoms, compared with 7.2 percent of men.

Those who said they had seriously considered suicide within the past year stood at 3.9 percent among women and 2 percent among men.

The proportion of emergency room patients treated for self-harm or suicide attempts is also rising rapidly. The rate was 2.4 percent in 2015 but increased to 8 percent in 2024. The KDCA said the sharp increase indicates that “social attention and preventive measures are urgently needed.”

Deaths from injuries unrelated to illness are also growing. In 2024, 30,000 people died from injury-related causes, an increase of 7 percent from the previous year. The number of emergency room visits due to injuries reached 1.39 million in 2023, up 8.3 percent from a year earlier.

Injuries are now the fourth-leading cause of death across all age groups and the leading cause of death among people aged 0 to 44.

The KDCA said that it will continue to strengthen monitoring and coordinate with other ministries to develop targeted mental health interventions for high-risk groups, particularly young women.

This article from the Hankook Ilbo, the sister publication of The Korea Times, is translated by generative AI and edited by The Korea Times.