To place these findings in context, it may also be important to discuss the past year prevalence of self-harm among students in this study which was was relatively high, 20% overall (24% for girls and 16% for boys). Most other studies have reported a life time prevalence of self-harm within the range of 13% and 23% [3]. One recent study reported a past year prevalence of 28% among middle school students [14]. However, these varying ranges reflect different age intervals used for participants as well as somewhat different definitions of self-harm across studies. However, in general, our participants had a relatively high level of self-harm.
