One in four minors with depressive symptoms and one in five with anxiety disorders according to the photograph taken by Sinpf (Society of Neuropsychopharmacology) in 2022. Hospitalizations for anorexia and bulimia tripled between 2020 and 2022 highlighted by Sinpia, the Italian Society of Neuropsychiatry of childhood and adolescence, which reports that in the last ten years anxiety and depression have increased among children and teenagers with an evolution in 30-40% of cases from anxiety and mood disorder to post-traumatic disorder. In 2021 the use of non-prescribed psychotropic drugs returned to growth and according to the Espad study by the Cnr it exceeded 6% among boys between 15 and 19 years old.
If mental health deteriorates in all Italians, for that of young and very young people – the adults of tomorrow – it is a red alert. Above all in the face, also in this case, of inadequate or patchy responses in the healthcare system. «Italy is a model in the world for the forerunner choice of a neuropsychiatry of childhood and adolescence capable of a 360-degree approach. However, it has few resources with its 394 beds compared to a national requirement of at least 700 and with the lack of a “tested” multidisciplinary and multiprofessional network in the area that allows for effective prevention, intensive and individualized assistance and controls”. Speaking is Elisa Maria Fazzi, president of Sinpia and member of Fiarped (Italian federation of scientific associations and societies in the pediatric area). And if “something has moved”, she explains, with post-graduate specialization places in Medicine tripling in recent years, the devastating effect of Covid would require immediate responses that are lacking today.
“During the pandemic, nine million children and adolescents have experienced substantial changes in their living environments, daily routines and educational and social networks that normally favor health promotion and resilience to traumatic events”, explain Claudio Mencacci and Matteo Balestrieri, Sinpf co-presidents. “There is a suffering generation – they continue – sitting on a karst river, to which attention must be paid in the context of a coordinated and scientifically validated national programming”. Even the Sinpf – which proposes a national agency for mental health – is looking to dedicated teams. “We need new care units for the 14-24 age group, which bring together several figures such as the neuropsychiatrist, the psychiatrist, the addiction services and the family paediatricians”, continue Mencacci and Balestrieri. More generally, the request is to first enlist those prevention and protection factors, when they “work”, which are school, family and peer relationships.
The latest Health behavior in school-aged children survey on a sample of 11, 13 and 15 year olds, coordinated by the Higher Institute of Health (ISS), seems to confirm this, probably due to the greater presence of parents at home in the initial months of Covid: “The pandemic has had a positive impact on children as regards family relationships, even if the well-being figure decreases with age,” explains Paola Nardone of the ISS, head of the project. Overall, indicators of perceived well-being worsened between 2018 and 2022, especially among girls. And mental health is one of the elements to keep under observation: «These are preliminary data – explains Rosanna Irene Comoretto, from the Department of Public Health and Pediatric Sciences of the University of Turin – but only just over 50% of 11-year-olds report a good level of psychological well-being, a percentage that drops drastically with age: at 15 it is 32%, one in three”.