AROUND half of "alternative" teenagers are likely to self harm, new research has suggested.

Some 46 per cent of goths, emos and punks purposefully injure themselves and almost one in five attempt suicide, according to the Medical Research Council (MRC) study.

These teens are four to eight times more likely to attempt suicide than their "non-alternative" peers, the authors said.

Scientists at the MRC's Social and Public Health Sciences Unit at the University of Glasgow and researchers from the University of Ulm, Germany, questioned 452 15-year-old German school students about which sub-culture they felt they belonged to and their habits surrounding self-harm and suicide.