Global increase in mental health problems among children in the midst of a pandemic

PARIS (AP) – By the time his parents took him to hospital, 11-year-old Pablo was barely eating and had completely stopped drinking. Weakened by months of self-deprivation, his heart had slowed down and his kidneys were weakening. Doctors injected him with fluids and fed him through a tube – the first steps towards the seam of another child who is separating amid the uproar of the coronavirus crisis.

For the doctors who treat them, the impact of the pandemic on children’s mental health is increasingly alarming. Pablo’s Parisian pediatric hospital has seen the number of children and young adolescents in need of treatment doubling after suicide attempts since September.

Doctors are reporting similar outbreaks elsewhere, with children – some as young as 8 years old – deliberately running into traffic, overdosing on pills and self-injuring. In Japan, child and adolescent suicides hit record levels in 2020, according to the Ministry of Education.

Pediatric psychiatrists say they are also seeing children with coronavirus phobias, tics and eating disorders, obsessed with infection, rubbing their hands raw, covering their bodies with disinfectant gel and terrified to get sick from food.

According to doctors, children also suffer from panic attacks, heart palpitations and other symptoms of mental anguish, as well as chronic addictions to mobile devices and computer screens that have become their caretakers, teachers and facilitators during locks, curfews and school closures.

“There is no prototype for the child in difficulty”, explains Dr. Richard Delorme, who heads the psychiatric unit treating Pablo of the giant pediatric hospital Robert Debré, the most frequented in France. “It concerns us all.”

Pablo’s father Jerome is still trying to figure out why his son gradually fell ill with a chronic eating disorder as the pandemic set in, slowly starving himself until the only foods he ate or small amounts of rice, tuna and cherry tomatoes.

Jerome suspects that last year’s disruption in Pablo’s routines may have contributed to his illness. Because France was locked up, the boy didn’t have classes at school for months and couldn’t say goodbye to his friends and teacher at the end of the school year.

“It was very difficult,” Jerome said. “It’s a generation that has been beaten.”

Sometimes other factors pile the misery beyond the burden of the 2.6 million COVID-19 victims who have died in the world’s worst health crisis in a century.

Islamic State extremists who killed 130 people in bomb attacks across Paris in 2015, including in a cafe on Pablo’s promenade at school, also left a searing mark in his childhood. Pablo believed the deceased cafe patrons were buried under the sidewalk he was walking on.

When he was hospitalized at the end of February, Pablo had lost a third of his previous weight. His heartbeat was so slow that doctors struggled to find a pulse and one of his kidneys was failing, said his father, who agreed to speak about his son’s illness on condition that they were not not identified by their last name.

“It’s a real nightmare to have a child who destroys himself,” said the father.

Pablo’s psychiatrist at the hospital, Dr Coline Stordeur, says some of his other young eating disorder patients, mostly between the ages of 8 and 12, told him they had started to be obsessed with gaining weight because they couldn’t stay active. A boy compensated by doing laps in his parents’ basement for hours every day, losing weight so precipitously that he had to be hospitalized.

Others told her that they were gradually restricting their diet: “More sugar, more fat, and ultimately nothing,” she says.

Some children try to keep their mental anguish to themselves, not wanting to further burden the adults in their lives who may be mourning loved ones or jobs lost due to the coronavirus. They “try to be forgotten children, who don’t add to their parents’ problems,” Stordeur said.

Children may also lack vocabulary about mental illness express their need for help and make the link between their difficulties and the pandemic.

“They don’t say, ‘Yes, I ended up here because of the coronavirus,’” Delorme said. “But what they tell you is about a chaotic world,” Yes, I don’t do my activities anymore “,” I don’t do my music anymore “,” Going to school is difficult in the morning ” , I have a hard time waking up, “I’m sick of the mask.” “

Dr David Greenhorn said the emergency department at the Royal Bradford Infirmary, where he works in the north of England, treats one or two children a week for mental health emergencies, including suicide attempts . The average is now closer to one or two a day, sometimes involving children as young as 8, he said.

“This is an international epidemic and we don’t recognize it,” Greenhorn said in a telephone interview. “In the life of an 8-year-old, a year is really very long. They have had enough. They can’t see the end. ”

In Robert Debré, the psychiatric unit used to handle around 20 suicide attempts per month involving children 15 and under. Not only has that number doubled in the few months since September, but some children also seem increasingly determined to end their own life, Delorme said.

“We are very surprised by the intensity of the desire to die in children who may be 12 or 13 years old,” he said. “Sometimes we have 9-year-olds who already want to die. And it’s not just provocation or blackmail through suicide. It is a real wish to end their life. ”

“The stress levels in children are really huge,” he said. “The crisis affects us all, from 2 to 99 years old.”

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AP writer Mari Yamaguchi in Tokyo contributed.

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