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Ethnicity, socio-economic status and self-harm in Swedish youth: a national cohort study
B Jablonska1, L Lindberg, F Lindblad
1Stockholm Centre for Public Health, Sweden. beata.jablonska@sll.se
Background:
Previous studies have shown an elevated risk for self-harm in adolescents from ethnic minorities. However, potential contributions to this risk from socio-economic factors have rarely been addressed. The main aim of this article was to investigate any such effects.
Method:
A national cohort of 1009 157 children born during 1973-1982 was followed prospectively from 1991 to 2002 in Swedish national registers. Multivariate Cox analyses of proportional hazards were used to estimate the relative risk of hospital admission for self-harm. Parental country/region of birth was used as proxy for ethnicity.
Results:
Youth with two parents born outside Sweden (except those from Southern Europe) had higher age- and gender-adjusted hazard ratios (HRs) of self-harm than the majority population (HR 1.6-2.3). The HRs decreased for all immigrant groups when socio-economic factors were accounted for but remained significantly higher for immigrants from Finland and Western countries and for youth with one Swedish-born and one foreign-born parent.
Conclusions:
Socio-economic factors explain much of the variation by parental country of birth of hospital admissions for self-harm in youth in Sweden.
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