Anxiety, depression, insomnia. These are some of the effects the COVID-19 pandemic has had on children and adolescents, including those who have had to stop attending school, take classes at home, and stop socializing with their peers, experts said. There are only 820 child psychiatrists in the country, which falls short of the UN's target of one per 10,000 inhabitants.
This was raised during the virtual forum "Childhood and Adolescence: The Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic on the Mental Health and Psychosocial Well-being of Children and Adolescents ," convened by the Colegio de México and UNICEF. Only 3 percent of 46 psychiatric hospitals serve children, explained Armida Granados of the Teaching and Training Division of the Juan N. Navarro Children's Psychiatric Hospital.
He explained that at that institution, patient care totaled 1,583 new consultations between March 2020 and March of this year. He explained that since April 2020, 28,906 people have been treated at the Lifeline; the children ages 11 to 16 who sought help were suffering from acute stress and depression.
From 1,300 cases of minors with mental health problems being treated in 2000, the number rose to 5,444 in 2019, said María Elena Medina-Mora, director of the UNAM School of Psychology.
The global prevalence of disorders in this population was 13.4 percent before the pandemic. The problems observed included attention deficit disorder, conduct disorder, substance use disorder in adolescents, anxiety, and depression, said Eduardo Madrigal, director of the Juan Ramón de la Fuente National Institute of Psychiatry.
He added that in addition to the existing problems for this population, measures to mitigate the pandemic have now altered the systems in which children develop.
