More than half of the 232 voluntary drug poisonings of young people registered in the last six years at the ULS Santa Maria Pediatric Emergency Room occurred in 2024 and 2025 and the majority were caused by medications available at home.
The alert was made to Lusa by the coordinator of the Pediatric Emergency Department at ULS Santa Maria, Erica Torres, after the Nurses and Doctors’ Associations drew attention to the risks of the so-called “paracetamol challenge”, promoted on social media and which encourages the deliberate taking of high doses of the drug.
According to the pediatrician, Most poisonings are caused by various medications that young people have at home, but, he said, “the notion we have is that, in fact, young people know what the lethal or toxic dose of paracetamol is,” possibly through content on social media.
“Just yesterday [quarta-feira] We had a teenager poisoning herself with 10 grams of paracetamol, which is a lot. There are 10 pills”, he highlighted.
Erica Torres stated that voluntary drug poisonings have been “a major concern” for those working in emergency services, revealing that, in the last six years, 232 cases have been registered at Hospital Santa Maria, in Lisbon, with more than half occurring in the last two years (131).
“The number is always growing: 59 in 2024 and 72 in 2025”, he listed.
According to the coordinator, 60% of adolescents already had a depressive or anxiety disorder, but around 30% did not have any pathology.
There are teenagers already treated in child psychiatry who take excessively prescribed medications, but many also resort to paracetamol, as it is easily accessible. The 500-milligram tablet is over-the-counter, while the one-gram tablet requires a prescription.
Although there are premeditated cases that constitute “true suicide attempts” — such as that of a teenager who saved medicine all summer to ingest them later — the doctor stated that the majority of cases are associated with impulsive acts.
“She made fun of her boyfriend or her father took away her cell phone, and they have this attitude in a very impulsive way, which they often regret”, he exemplified.
The coordinator rejects that these are calls for attention. “We can never say that,” he said, highlighting that these adolescents are always evaluated by child psychiatry and those who present ideation are hospitalized.
For the doctor, these behaviors are “synonymous with discomfort” and, sometimes, a resource to alleviate it, similar to self-harm.
“That’s the same thing. It’s doing yourself harm,” he said, explaining that teenagers are, in themselves, a risk group, as they do not have a fully developed prefrontal cortex, which makes it difficult to manage impulses.
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