A free psychological desk for Milanese high school students: this is the new service launched by the Welcomed medical center on the occasion of the International Day for the Rights of Children and Adolescents, which falls on 20 November.
Always attentive to the needs of the most fragile sections of the population with the solidarity project “Suspended visit” – which makes it possible to offer specialist visits, speech therapy or psychomotricity sessions, assessments of specific learning disabilities, diagnostic insights and free psychological interviews to patients who could not afford health services of this type – Welcomed now guarantees young people in Milan between 13 and 18 years of age the possibility of booking up to 18 December one to five free interviews (online or in presence) with a psychologist, lasting 30 minutes each, subject to parental consent in the case of minors.
The initiative was officially presented with the video #Invisibiliteen – created by the creative agency Francesco Emiliani Agency and directed by Marco Armando Piccinini – which talks about the need to change the image that has always been associated with youth psychological distress, inviting young people to remove your profile photo on social channels and ask for help from Welcomed.
In fact, in the first nine months of 2022 alone, the non-profit medical center offered over 300 free psychological interviews in Milan to 13- to 18-year-olds: “Covid has been a ‘detonator-accelerator-emersive’ agent which amplified already latent ailments and discomforts especially in young people – explains Raffaella Damonte, pediatrician and health director of Welcomed – Eating disorders have increased by 40% compared to the first six months of 2019, with hospitalizations tripling between 2019 and 2021, further growth since 2022 with age of onset down to 11-13 years”.
An alarming situation, to which is added the increase in phenomena of anxiety, depression, aggression, sleep disorders, digital addiction, social withdrawal, acts of self-harm and attempted suicides, as emerges from the numbers collected by the Italian Society of Childhood Neuropsychiatry and adolescence.
“According to data released a few days ago by Unicef, almost half of all mental health problems begin within the age of 14 and 75% of these develop within the age of 24, but in most cases it is not identified or taken in charge – underlines the managing director of Welcomed, Giulia Di Donato – In the world, almost 46 thousand adolescents die from suicide every year, which means more than one every 11 minutes”.
Numbers that “on the one hand cry out for help from young people and on the other reveal an alarming truth: the invisibility of their discomfort and the insufficient response of the system – concludes the president of the non-profit medical center, Paolo Colonna – dedicated hospitalization beds and semi-residential therapeutic structures are scarce to ensure interventions of greater complexity and intensity, with significant differences at the regional level of the network of child and adolescent neuropsychiatry services”.
(For further information and to book your free interviews, you can consult the website www.centrowelcomed.it/invisibiliteen and write to the email address [email protected])