and self harm without suicidal intent. This is important, as the extent to which suicidal and non-suicidal self harm should be considered different diagnostic categories is a source of debate,13 14 15 16 and non-suicidal self injury has now been included under “conditions for further study” in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual, fifth edition. Similar to the findings from Moran et al’s longitudinal population study, where adolescents were followed to age 29 years,10 we found an overall reduction in the prevalence of self harm over time; the prevalence of self harm in the past year was 16.4% at age 16 years and 7.3% at age 21 years. However, whereas Moran et al found that 9 out of 10 adolescents who self harmed reported no further episodes of self harm in adulthood, we found strong evidence for a high level of continuity in self harm between age 16 and 21 years. It is possible that the strong associations found with future self harm in this study may begin to attenuate over future assessments.
