Keeping COVID out: a collaborative approach to COVID-19 is associated with a significant reduction in self-harm in young people in custody

Abstract

Objective: To describe the collaboration between Youth Justice New South Wales (YJNSW) and Justice Health and Forensic Mental Health Network (JHFMHN) during the early COVID-19 Response (CR) across the six Youth Justice centres in NSW, and the reduced incidence of self-harm noted over this period. Methods: Narrative article with analysis of self-harm incident data during the initial CR period of March to May 2020, compared to the same period in 2019. Results: During the initial CR period (March to May 2020), there was a highly significant, four-fold reduction in self-harming incidents recorded by both YJNSW and JHFMHN compared with the equivalent time period in 2019 (p