Melatonin Use Reduced Self-Harm Injury Risk in Pediatric Patients

A recent article published in the Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry examined how melatonin use impacted the risk of self-harm and unintentional injury in pediatric patients, finding a reduced risk in patients who have used melatonin.

The population-based cohort study focused on over 25,000 pediatric patients who began using melatonin between 6 and 18 years old. The researchers noted that they could quantify all melatonin use because, at the time, it was available by prescription only in Sweden, the country the study was conducted in.

The data collected looked at the year before the medication prescription and when the patient took the melatonin. A comparative analysis of injury risk and self-harm before and after melatonin use provided insights into the effect of the medication.

According to the study, the injury rates peaked in the month just before medication initiation, with a significantly high rise in female participants. The study noted that the self-harm injury rate in female patients was 18.2 per 100 person-years. The risk was considerably lower for male patients at 2.9 self-harm injuries per 100 person-years.

Comparatively, the self-harm injury rates within one month of starting melatonin were significantly lower. There were 11.1 and 1.4 self-harm injuries per 100 person-years in female and male participants, respectively.

Despite significantly impacting self-harm injury rates, the clinicians could not definitively find a link between melatonin use and body injuries, falls, and transport accidents.

This study builds on previous findings that poor sleep or sleep disorders are linked to psychiatric disorders and a higher incidence of self-harm. Beyond finding that 87.3% of participants had been diagnosed with a psychiatric disorder, the data supports the idea that better sleep reduces risk.

Although the researchers did not conduct any sleep measurement analyses, the effects of melatonin allowed them to assume improved sleep patterns after medication initiation. 

“Our findings suggest that melatonin use is associated with a decreased risk of intentional self-harm among adolescent females with psychiatric disorders,” concluded researchers in the study. “Although nonpharmacological treatments were not investigated and causality of the findings cannot be claimed, this study supports the hypothesis that improving youth's sleep hygiene may be an important intervention to reduce self-harm in this pediatric population.”