A third of British children consider suicide by age 16

Up to one third of children in Britain have either considered or attempted to commit suicide when they were under the age of 16, a study has found.

According to the latest study for the brand-new mental health charity service MindFull, 32 percent of youths in Britain have thought about taking their own lives.

Moreover, the study found that 29 percent of British teenagers harmed themselves on purpose, while over 12 percent suffered from thoughts of despair, such as feeling like they were failures on almost a daily basis when they were under the age of 16.

The study also found that out of the 850,000 teenagers in Britain with diagnosable mental health issues, nearly 75 percent receive no treatment because of the lack of support for those in need of help.

Founder and chief executive of MindFull, Emma-Jane Cross said, “too many children” are let down or simply ignored when they want to speak out about how they feel.

“It’s unacceptable that so many [young people] are having to resort to harming themselves on purpose in order to cope, or worse still are thinking about ending their own live,” she added.

Earlier in January, figures released by the Office for National Statistics (ONS) has shown there were 6,045 suicide attempts in 15 year-olds and over in Britain in 2011, up by 437 to 6,045, indicating an increase of 7.2 percent when compared with the previous year.