2024-08-06 14:07:58
More and more young people in Germany are affected by mental illnesses. These include depression, adjustment disorders and addictions.
More children and young people than ever before were treated in hospitals for mental illnesses and behavioral disorders in 2022. After injuries and poisoning, mental health was the second most common reason for hospital stays, according to the Federal Statistical Office.
Mental illnesses and behavioral disorders also include those caused by alcohol: for example, the consequences of alcohol abuse and acute alcohol poisoning or dependency or withdrawal syndromes. Alcohol-related cases accounted for the second most common diagnosis for children and adolescents in 2022, with around 8,800 (11 percent).
“Unfortunately, young people are drinking almost as much as they did before the pandemic,” stresses Renate Schepker from the German Society for Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, Psychosomatics and Psychotherapy (DGKJP). In severe cases, she even sees an increase. There are more and more young people who are becoming addicted and need detoxification or withdrawal.
During the Corona period, some young people were left behind and lost from the education system, they dropped out of school or training and then increasingly resorted to various addictive substances. “In addition, the drug market is flooded with dangerous substances, more and more synthetic drugs,” explains Schepker, who is herself the director of two addiction centers for children.
According to the Federal Office, the most common diagnosis in mentally ill children and adolescents is depression. In 2022, there were around 22,600 cases in hospitals. This corresponds to more than a quarter (28 percent) of all cases in which young people were treated as inpatients for mental illnesses.
According to Renate Schepker, there are objectively more cases of depression among young people after Corona. The “naive youthful worldview” of children and young people has sometimes been “virtually destroyed” by the pandemic and other disasters, “also by wars in the world and all kinds of events that make life difficult,” says Schepker.
In almost 7,900 or ten percent of the cases of children and adolescents treated, the focus of treatment was on reactions to severe stress and adjustment disorders. “These can be caused by the occurrence of exceptionally stressful life events or by particular changes in life that lead to a persistently unpleasant situation,” explain the statisticians.
“The vast majority of mentally ill children and young people are not treated in hospital, but on an outpatient basis,” says Schepker. Many milder cases do not need to be admitted to a hospital as inpatients; there are many “who cope wonderfully with outpatient treatment.”
Of around 435,900 young patients in hospitals, 19 percent were treated for mental illnesses and behavioral disorders. The data refer to children and adolescents between the ages of ten and 17.
Girls are more likely to be affected than boys. “Overall, in recent years, an increasing proportion of children and young people have been treated as inpatients for mental illnesses and behavioural disorders,” say the federal statisticians. In 2012, the figure was 13 percent of the total of around 589,900 young hospital patients.