Alarm for children and teenagers: psychic damage from lockdowns and repeated quarantines
A large analysis published by JAMA Pediatrics , which included 29 studies conducted on over 80,000 young people, concluded that today one in 4 adolescents, in Italy and in the world, has clinical symptoms of depression and one in 5 signs of a d 'disorder. anxiety. These are terrible data.
A theme, that of the mental health of young people, that we at Atlantico Quotidiano have always dealt with with the aim of making them understand its importance. A few months ago we already reported the surge in the use of anxiolytics and psychotropic drugs by young people to highlight an underestimated problem. Our young people literally had two years of life taken away. It is clear that even the boys should have played their part in the fight against Covid , but to date, after more than two years, finally someone notices the enormous damage caused by the repeated lockdowns and being denied the possibility of living freely, as we have done. all, the best years of one's life. Let's take school as an example: our children are forced to live with rules that force them to stay in front of a screen rather than close to their classmate, with the consequence of being deprived of school sociality and all the beauty that implies.
Experts from the Italian Society of Neuropsychopharmacology state that the likelihood of mental disorders is particularly high among older children than among children. Teenagers were unable to live in serenity together with their peers, fundamental moments of growth, from the first relationships to the final exams. But the situation is also dramatic for the children of kindergartens and elementary schools, who take their first steps in the life of relationships and socializing, fundamental steps in the growth of a child. A situation that can have negative consequences not only in the present but also in the long term. For this reason, many experts tell us that it is necessary to intercept mental distress in children and take action to reverse the course.
The present, however, does not bode well, at least in our country, where the government still does not seem willing to change the absurd rules on school quarantines and return to normal.
We wanted to focus on school because we consider it to be of primary importance, but it is clear that the repercussions also concern extracurricular activities and daily life, such as sports, which are also conditioned by the absurd rules that have limited their development. We could cite hundreds of other situations, such as discos and places of entertainment, or the ridiculous and harmful narrative for which young people had turned into dangerous spreaders and described as the cause of the circulation of the virus, going so far as to point the finger at children for having dared to hug their friends.
The hope is to see a turnaround in the pandemic management policy, at least concerning the school, a return to normality. We would no longer want to see our children teaching with the windows wide open during the winter months. Unfortunately, however, the damage caused by the management of these two years is now full-blown. Prevention is better than cure, but here it seems we don't want to prevent or cure.
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This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Atlantico Quotidiano at the URL https://www.atlanticoquotidiano.it/quotidiano/allarme-bambini-e-ragazzi-danni-psichici-da-lockdown-e-ripetute-quarantene/ on Sat, 29 Jan 2022 03:53:00 +0000.