- New laws to protect vulnerable people at risk of self-harm
- Those who provide the tools for self-harm face up to 5 years behind bars, helping to cut crime and deliver the government’s plan for change
- Perpetrators face prosecution even if no self-harm takes place
Vulnerable people who are encouraged or assisted to harm themselves will have greater protection under a new offence being introduced as part of the Crime and Policing Bill.
To mark Mental Health Awareness Week, the government is pushing ahead with vital new measures to further protect those at risk – with recent NHS data showing self-harm hospital admissions among young people have soared by a third.
The government is going further to strengthen safeguards – broadening the law to capture more malicious behaviour, bringing parity between the online and offline world and protect people who are at risk of suicide or self-harm.
The new laws will make it a criminal offence to directly assist someone to self-harm – such as giving someone a blade or sending them pills – whether it is done in person or online. This will build on existing laws that already prevent people encouraging or assisting suicide or self-harm through content online.
Minister for Victims and Violence Against Women and Girls (VAWG), Alex Davies-Jones, said
The prevalence of serious self-harm, especially in young people, is hugely concerning. It is an awful truth that some people encourage or assist such behaviour, and one I wanted to draw attention to during Mental Health Awareness Week.
Whether encouragement is by communication, or more directly by assistance, the outcome is the same. We are determined that anybody intending to see others harm themselves is stopped and dealt with in the strongest way.
Under this broader offence, someone can also be prosecuted if their intention is to cause serious self-harm even when this does not result in injuries to the vulnerable person. Those found guilty face up to 5 years in prison.
Self-harm can occur at any age. A recent study on people aged 13 to 15 reported that prevalence was greater among girls (22.7%) than boys (8.5%).
There is also increasing evidence of links between internet usage and self-harm, with one study finding that, among self-harm hospital presentations, the prevalence of suicide and self-harm related internet use was 26% among children and adolescents.
Anybody struggling with self-harm or suicidal thoughts is urged to get in touch with their GP or get advice and emotional support from organisations such as the Samaritans, Mind, or SANEline.
Background information
- To avoid criminalising vulnerable people who share their experiences of self-harm publicly, if a person does not intend to encourage or assist serious self-harm then they will not be prosecuted as they did not mean to cause any harm to others. This enables the issue to continue to be discussed openly, for awareness and therapeutic purposes, without fear of repercussion.
- Mental Health Awareness Week runs from 12 to 18 May 2025
- The Online Safety Act 2023 gave partial effect to the Law Commission recommendation to create an offence, modelled on the offence of encouraging and assisting suicide, to tackle the encouragement of self-harm. It did so by introducing a new offence of encouraging or assisting serious self-harm by means of verbal or electronic communications, publications or correspondence
- The Crime and Policing Bill will repeal the existing offence and replace it with a broader offence of encouraging or assisting serious self-harm to cover all means by which serious self-harm broader may be encouraged or assisted, including by any means of communication and in any other way
- The offence contains two key elements to ensure that the offence does not disproportionately impact vulnerable people who harm themselves and constrains the offence to only the most culpable offending. These are (1) that the defendant’s act must be intended to encourage or assisting the serious self-harm of another person; and (2) that the defendant’s act is capable of encouraging or assisting the serious self-harm of another person. The offence therefore targets those who intend by their act to cause another person to seriously self-harm Sharing experiences of self-harm, or simply discussing the issue, without such intention will not be a criminal offence
- For more information on hospital admission breakdown data visit Hospital admissions related to self harm, with age and geographical breakdowns – NHS England Digital
