abstract: On a knife edge:more than one in ten teenage girls self harm each year, according to a study of more than 6,000 school pupils aged 15 and 16 in England. Researchers at the universities of Bath and Oxford found that girls are four times more likely than boys to have engaged in deliberate self harm, but that only 13 per cent of self harming incidents reported by the pupils resulted in hospital visits. The study reveals that self cutting, at 65 per cent, was the more prevalent form of self harm, followed by self poisoning through overdose, at 31 per cent. The research is published in By Their Own Young Hand: Deliberate self-harm and suicidal ideas in adolescents, published by Jessica Kingsley Publishers. See also pages 8-10.