Eliminating sexual violence could reduce teenage mental ill health

(Image: Pixabay CC0) - The prevalence of serious mental health problems among 17-year-olds could drop by as much as 16.8% for girls and 8.4% for boys if they were not subjected to sexual violence, such as sexual assault and harassment, according to estimates from UCL researchers. The new research, published today in The Lancet Psychiatry , uses information from 9,971 young people born across the UK in 2000-02, who are being followed by the Millennium Cohort Study. At the age of 17, just over 1,000 girls and 260 boys reported they had experienced sexual assault or an unwelcome sexual approach in the previous 12 months. The researchers found that rates of two serious mental health problems - severe psychological distress and self-harm - were higher, on average, among victims than among those who did not report experiencing sexual assault or harassment by at this age. This was true even when taking into account a wide range of other factors known to affect teenagers' risk of experiencing sexual violence and mental ill health. The authors calculated that in a hypothetical scenario* where sexual assault and harassment were eliminated, rates of self-harm among teenage girls might drop by 16.8% - from the current level of 28.9% in a world with these forms of sexual violence, to 24% (so a five-percentage point reduction) in a world without. Additionally, high levels of psychological distress might drop by 14% (22.6% v 19.