Youths with eating disorder also inflict self-injury
WASHINGTON - Around four in 10 US teens with eating disorders also intentionally harm themselves, and the rate could be higher because clinicians don't routinely screen for self-injury, a study published Thursday shows. "These are very high numbers, but they're still conservative estimates," because doctors and other care-givers don't always ask young patients about self-injury, said Rebecka Peebles, a lead author of the study conducted by researchers from Stanford University and Lucile Packard Children's Hospital . "If you see an innocent-looking 12-year-old boy, you don't even think of asking about self-injurious behaviour . We ask 97 per cent of children 12 years and up if they smoke cigarettes; we need to get that good with screening for self-injurious behaviour," she said. For the study, published in the Journal of Adolescent Health, researchers examined the records of 1,432 patients, ages 10-21, who were admitted to the eating diso...