Young Americans Face Mental Health Crisis Due To “Corona”

With the spread of the Corona pandemic, an increasing number of young Americans are suffering from psychological disorders such as anxiety, depression and even suicide, prompting doctors, parents and teachers to sound the alarm bells.
Millions of students and pupils who have been studying from home remotely since last March are forced to sit for hours in front of the computer, and personal interaction and the exercise of physical, artistic or musical exercises are absent.
“There are days when I feel very sad and hopeless… like a never-ending nightmare,” said Sarah Frank, 18, of Tampa, Florida.
And since her family members suffer from health problems and are therefore more vulnerable to infections than others, she has been staying at home since March. “There are feelings of loneliness for me and other teenagers,” said the young woman who co-founded State of Mind, a teen support site last summer.
And Diana Cabota, a mother of two who took virtual classes at Arlington Public School in Virginia, reported increasing signs of depression in her 10-year-old son. “He woke up in the morning and went back to sleep until noon,” the psychiatrist told AFP. And he used to say things that are not smart and that I am a failure. She added: “He was late with his homework and cried all the time (…) and told me every day that I miss my friends.” “For some kids it’s worse,” she says. I constantly hear about kids taking medication, ”which indicates that she couldn’t find a doctor to treat her son in Arlington due to the high demand.
There are no national statistics for 2020 on the phenomenon of teenage suicide, which increased in the United States 10 years ago. But some local cases are shocking: in Nevada, 19 students have committed suicide, twice as many as in 2019. And if it was not possible to attribute it directly to the pandemic, the authorities, who are under great pressure , announced that schools would reopen soon.
According to Carlos Arbalo, the attending physician at Lawrence School in Los Angeles, where studies have been completely hypothetical since March: “The level of insomnia and depression is great”.
“If the Covid-19 epidemic for adults is a health crisis, for children it is a mental health crisis,” said Susan Duffy, professor of pediatrics and emergency at Brown University.
According to the Centers for Disease Prevention and Control, visits by students in the age group between 12 and 17 to designated emergency units for mental illness increased by 31% between March and October 2020 compared to the same period in 2019, while they increased in the 5 to 11 age group 24%.
Susan Duffy tests him directly at Rhode Island State Hospital, where she works. Like many of her colleagues, she says, she “sees an increase in suicide attempts.” “We are seeing more children wanting to harm themselves in what are considered covert suicide attempts, and this is very worrying,” she added.
Against all this disturbing data, the battle to reopen schools is still at its fiercest. Duffy says students “suffer from the absence of teachers or loving adults outside of the family circle, who often reveal hidden signs of crisis, depression or anxiety.”
In the United States, the decision to open schools depends on each region. Currently, 38% of American schools only offer distance education, against 62% in September, according to the Borbio site which follows the case.
And at the end of January (January), a report from the Centers for Disease Prevention and Control urged the reopening of schools, noting that schools that adhere to social distancing and putting on masks and other health measures do not have not recorded a rapid outbreak of the virus. .
But the unions of teachers who are suspicious of the infection are fighting back. In Chicago, a test of strength is underway between the city and the unions, with the threat of a strike, and in Los Angeles, the unions are asking that all teachers be vaccinated before they reopen their doors.
The reopening of schools became more urgent after the tension caused by the pandemic, increasing unemployment and difficult conditions led to an increase in cases of domestic abuse, according to the Centers for Disease Prevention and Control .
“Those who report these cases are usually the teachers,” says Caputo. “When parents feel hopeless, it leads to violent behavior, alcoholism, and physical and psychological violence,” she explains.