Many of the 9,400 people who are seeking help in hospital A&E departments after self-harming have been drinking alcohol.
The number of these patients who have deliberately injured themselves peaks around midnight, and almost one-third are admitted on Sundays and Mondays.
The links to alcohol are also underlined by the increased number of self-harm patients who are treated in hospitals on public holidays.
The disturbing patterns have been confirmed in the newly published annual report of the National Registry of Deliberate Self-Harm.
One in every 162 girls aged 15-19 and one in every 188 men in their early 20s were treated in hospital last year for self harm.
Nearly one-in-five of these patients at hospitals in Dublin north and the north east of the country left before receiving medical advice.
Those who sought help in hospitals in the south were most likely to be looked after.
The report pointed out that assessment and management procedures of these vulnerable patients is variable and inconsistent around the country.
It showed that there were 12,010 incidents in 2012 involving 9,483 patients, a 2pc decrease on the rate in 2011.
But the rate last year was still 12pc higher than in 2007.
Source: Eilish O'Regan, Irish Independent, 06/09/2013
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