Carrà (Bicocca), ‘it is necessary to accompany young people with mental suffering’

2023-10-10 17:21:44

“We need to accompany our young students in an evolutionary phase and hand them over, we hope, to a society ready to take care of them”. This was said by Giuseppe Carrà, professor of Psychiatry at the University of Milan-Bicocca, on the sidelines of the event ‘Socialized Minds, youth mental health in the social media era’, organized by Janssen (J&J) and the University of Milan -Bicocca and with the patronage of the Municipality of Milan, on the occasion of World Mental Health Day 2023. The psychiatrist comments on the results of the survey conducted by Bicocca, in collaboration with the British University of Surrey, on the youth population, in particular the student population , from which it emerged that “beyond some differences probably due to specific cultural characteristics, the expression of mental suffering on the part of young people – states Carrà – is very similar and the dimensions that are complained about are above all those of loneliness, social disconnection, intense anxiety leading to self-harming depressive thoughts”.

“I think that mental health workers – underlines the psychiatrist – have the duty, in addition to treating their users, also to take care of their communities, intercepting educational agencies and informal subjects who live alongside young people in the area and providing them with elements of knowledge to early identify the elements of suffering in terms of mental well-being of our young people. Oratories, sports associations, informal gatherings – he details – are the places where we must go to meet our young people to collect a request for help that perhaps is not still fully expressed but which we must be able to grasp.”

“We are certainly living in a particular time – reflects the psychiatrist -. After the pandemic, anxiety and depression disorders have left a heavy legacy on our population and in particular on young people. The epidemic that is affecting us makes us ask questions, such as: are it people who are tired or is it our society that represents a risk factor for mental health in this difficult time? The answer, as with all complex problems, cannot be simple and both circumstances are probably true. Anxiety and depression are medical disorders which, however, can have a profound impact on social determinants of particular significance. We need – concludes Carrà – clinical and health interventions but also health policies that remove the social determinants of this insidious and now prevalent malaise”.