ArticleThe British journal of clinical psychology2026
Did the COVID-19 pandemic impact on time trends in self-poisoning in youth? A sex-specific national register-based interrupted time-series analysis in Sweden.
Article in The British journal of clinical psychology, 2026. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Not yet cited in PubMed.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
0 citing papers in PubMed.
No citing paper in PubMed yet.
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
7 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
objectivesTo assess the extent to which the COVID-19 pandemic impacted trends of self-poisoning in young boys and girls in Sweden, and whether impacts differed by sociodemographic and psychiatric health factors.
methodsWe used an interrupted time series analysis of a register-based national cohort to assess the sex-specific associations between the COVID-19 pandemic and monthly rate of hospitalization for intentional self-poisoning. Individual-level data were collected from a rolling cohort of Swedish young people ages 10-19 between 2005 and 2021 (approximately 1.13 million individuals per year). Separate models were run to examine differential associations among girls by age group, socioeconomic position, and prior anxiety or depression diagnosis.
resultsA total of 17,151 cases of self-poisoning were observed across the study period, 78.4% among girls. The association between the pandemic and self-poisoning was sex-specific. An annualized increase of 19% per year (95% CI: 5%-35%) between March 2020 and December 2021 occurred among girls, corresponding to a reversal of a declining pre-pandemic trend (p = .0002). No significant change in level or trend occurred for boys. Increases among girls were higher among ages 10-14 and were observed regardless of socioeconomic position or prior psychiatric diagnosis.
conclusionIn Sweden, despite a less restrictive public health response, the COVID-19 pandemic was accompanied by a substantial increase in rates of self-poisoning and a reversal of previously declining trends among young girls, exacerbating long-standing gender gaps. This underscores the need for enhanced preparedness to deal with indirect effects of future health crises on this dangerous expression of mental distress.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.