Among young people, episodes of self-harm and violence are increasing, as well as alcohol consumption The use of emergency rooms is more and more frequent and relationship difficulties are growing
Sleep-related disorders, unregulated eating and continuous use of the Internet and social media the greatest “post Covid” criticalities in adolescent behavior had emerged, which emerged in the
2021 edition of the annual national survey of the Adolescent Laboratory and Iard Research Institute
, carried out exactly one year after the start of the pandemic. Few strictly medical consequences if we exclude a significant increase in “headache”easily linked to sleep disturbance and excessive use of smartphones and computers, also due to the months of remote school.
Not comforting signs
But what is the situation on the threshold of the third year of the Covid era? ”
The 2022 edition of the Adolescence-Yard Laboratory survey that we have just got
started it will give us objective data to think about – he explains Carlo Buzzisociologist of the University of Trento and scientific director of research -, but the signals collected by the constant monitoring that we carry out in the schools where we are present are not comforting. We are faced with a widespread psychological malaise which overall affects the behavior of adolescents, who struggle to find the right dynamics of a sociality that they have had to park for many months “.
Psychological malaise
A phenomenon certainly not only Italian, as one highlights
meta-analysis reported on PsycArXiv performed on 29 studies
made between 1 January 2020 and 16 February 2021 (which included 80,879 young people under the age of 18), according to which the anxious and depressive behaviors of adolescents effectively doubled. The rest is told by doctors, psychologists, teachers and, unfortunately, the daily news: increase in episodes of self-harm and violence; increase in alcohol consumption, more and more frequent use of the emergency room for physical and psychological problems.
The numbers
It provides a dramatically unambiguous data Riccardo BettigaGuarantor for childhood and adolescence of the Lombardy Region: «From one survey carried out on 5 hospital wards and 8 territorial services of Neuropsychiatry of childhood and adolescence of the Lombardy Regionreferring only to the months of January 2020 and 2021, we found the number of visits to the emergency room more than doubled (from 45 to 96) and increased by almost 25 percent (from 41 to 59) requests for hospitalization relating to causes directly related to acts of self-harm or suicide attempts. The data, although not exhaustive of the regional reality, are frankly extensible in their reading ». And it is easy to imagine that this worsening of the phenomenon is equally referable to the whole national reality.
Relations with peers
The relationship within the peer group and in the family also appears having suffered a worsening compared to the situation prior to the pandemic. The percentage of adolescents who define relationships within the peer group as “excellent” (Adolescent Laboratory-Iard data) went from 35.7 per cent (2020 survey) to 29.9 per cent (2021 survey), while negative reviews increased: “Unsatisfactory or critical reports” from 12.1 percent to 14.3 percent.
Relationships in the family
The difference regarding family relationships is even more marked: the percentage of those who indicated family cohabitation as “pleasant” fell sharply from 42.9 per cent (2020) to 29.5 per cent (2021) compared to a slight increase in those who defined it as more aseptically “quiet” (from 32.3 percent to 34.5 percent). While on the side of negative judgments, the “conflictual” went from 19.5 percent to 26.7 percent and the “criticism” from 4.2 percent to 8.7 percent.
A long wave
It remains to understand whether and to what extent the “side effects” of Covid on adolescents can be transitory and whether the slow return to normality can cancel them or at least mitigate them. “Times may not be very short – he claims Alessandra Marazzani, psychologist and member of the board of directors of Laboratorio Adolescenza -. Two years is a very long time when compared to how short adolescence is, so the climate of uncertainty and insecurity in which the pandemic has forced them to live it can affect their lives even apart from the Covid emergency. Not to mention that the anguish with which they are experiencing the current war in Ukraine, which is followed a lot on social networks, is further fueling their sense of insecurity and unease ”, he concludes.
May 2, 2022 (change May 2, 2022 | 09:11)
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