Figure 2 shows the reasons given for the most recent self-harm episode. The most common reasons were to gain relief from terrible feelings (64.4%) and a desire to punish oneself (41.0%). Of the whole sample, 25.3% gave ‘wanted to die’ as a reason (25% males and 25.4% females). Females were more likely than males to select desire to punish self (43.8% compared to 29.4%, χ2 = 12.30, p < 0.001) and to gain relief from terrible feelings (66.7% compared to 55.9%, χ2 = 8.56, p = 0.003), whereas males were more likely than females to choose ‘superficial reasons’ such as “I was curious” or “because my friend was” (7.8% compared to 2.2%, χ2 = 13.96, p < 0.001). There were no other large gender differences in reasons given.
