Those who selected ‘other’ for what they did when they self-harmed and why they did it were invited to give further details (see Additional file 2: Appendix B). These free text responses were independently coded by JK and DG, based on the themes emerging from the data [20], for example ‘head butting a wall’ and ‘pulling hair’ were classified into the theme ‘self-battery’ for what was done, and ‘because I was grieving and it made me feel better’ was classified as ‘response to difficulty’ for why it was done. Where appropriate, themes arising from our data were classified using the categories from Hawton et al. in their coding of open responses [15]. Where more than one code applied, the response was given as many codes as needed. If the raters did not deem a described action to be self-harm then it was given a code of ‘not self-harm’. All cases that had received discrepant codes were examined and a consensus reached for each. Initial inter-rater agreement was 88% for ‘what they did’ and 72% for ‘why they did it’, but
