BERLIN (AP) – Pollina Dinner returned to school in Berlin for the first time this week after a two-month lockdown. The 9-year-old third grader was delighted to see her classmates and teachers again, but is concerned about the effect of the coronavirus pandemic on her life.
“I am not afraid of the coronavirus, I am afraid that everything will continue like this – that my school will close again, I cannot see my friends and I cannot go to the movies with my family,” the girl said, as she said. fingered her blue medical mask and sighed deeply. “And wearing this mask is worse than having all the shops closed.”
Psychiatrists, psychologists and pediatricians in Germany have increasingly raised the alarm that school closures, social restrictions and other precautions are increasing the fear, disruption and stress of the pandemic among Germany’s 13.7 million children and teenagers, thus creating the prospect of a future mental health crisis. is enlarged.
“We don’t have long-term studies yet, but there is a lot of anecdotal evidence of a crisis-induced increase in hospital admissions and psychological overflowing practices,” said Julia Asbrand, professor of child and adolescent psychology at Berlin’s Humboldt University. The Associated Press.
A recent survey by the University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf found that about one in three children suffers from pandemic-related anxiety or depression or exhibits psychosomatic symptoms such as headaches or stomachaches. According to the survey, children from poorer and immigrant families are disproportionately affected.
Pollina, who emigrated from Russia with her family in 2019, is concerned about forgetting a lot of her German as she only speaks Russian at home. She is one of 150 young people from underprivileged families before the pandemic. regularly spent time after school in a youth support program on the eastern outskirts of the German capital.
Arche – Ark in English – is located in Berlin’s Hellersdorf district, a district of drab concrete buildings built during East Germany’s former communist regime. Some children are still allowed to come in person, but only once every two weeks. The rest of the time, the social workers and educators try to keep in touch through video chats while helping their young clients with distance learning.
“Many have withdrawn completely and no longer want to leave their room. They have gained weight a lot, play online games non-stop and have no structure in their daily lives, ”said Arche founder Bernd Siggelkow.
The second big lockdown in Germany started before Christmas. Students in grades 1-3 were allowed to return to classrooms with smaller classes and limited lessons this week. The government hopes to ease further restrictions in the coming weeks and has said reopening all schools is a top priority.
However, there is concern that the country is slipping into a third wave of infections due to more contagious variants of the virus. Virologists have said repeatedly that it is still unclear to what extent the virus spreads from school-age children to homes and communities. According to the country’s disease control center, more than 2 million people have contracted the virus in Germany and nearly 70,000 people have died from COVID-19, although only 10 are under the age of 20.
While children are not as at risk for serious COVID-19 complications as older adults, experts say they could be more vulnerable to the pandemic’s additional mental health effects.
An analysis by the German health insurance company DAK with regard to juvenile psychological problems confirms the first-person observations of Arche employees.
The evaluation, obtained by the German news agency dpa, showed that the number of children and teenagers hospitalized for psychiatric treatment in Berlin nearly doubled during the first half of 2020, when schools were closed for more than two months during the country’s first lockdown. with the first six months of 2019.
The statistic underscores the psychological pressures the pandemic is putting on young people, but does not illustrate the magnitude of the problem, Christoph Correll, the director of child and adolescent psychiatry at Charite Hospital in Berlin, told DPA.
“Hospital admissions are the tip of the iceberg,” he said.
Teenagers, especially girls, are more prone to eating disorders and self-harm, and many children’s mental health problems go unnoticed as parents are overwhelmed and teachers, social workers and pediatricians don’t have regular contact with students, clients and patients, experts warn.
Psychology professor Asbrand is concerned that the mental health of children and teenagers during the pandemic has not received enough attention. Along with other professionals in the field, she wrote an open letter to the government this month to push for better attention for young people in the ongoing health crisis and to prioritize the reopening of society.
An immediate action that the government could take to help mitigate potential problems would be to allow groups to gather for school and youth sports, consistent with hygiene and distance precautions.
“We don’t all know yet how this will develop in the long term, but we need to focus now on the mental health of young people,” she said.
While attending Arche this week for help with online assigned homework, 16-year-old Robin Reyer said not being able to hang out with friends is one of the hardest parts of the pandemic restraints.
“I want to celebrate birthdays again, go out and play soccer with my friends in the park or meet them at Burger King,” he said as he took a break outside in the spring sun.
“Now I can only meet one friend,” he said. “That is really stupid.”