Germany: Outbreak of mental illness in minors due to pandemic lockdown

The dramatic increase in mental illnesses recorded among children and adolescents in Germany today is attributed to the coronavirus pandemic and the lockdown. Scientists now seem to agree that, especially the quarantine imposed during the second half of the pandemic, its main victims were school children.

Eating disorders, sleep problems, depression, excessive stress are increasingly affecting children who were away from school and their friends for weeks and months due to the lockdown imposed as a measure to deal with the coronavirus.

According to a survey by the first channel of the public television ARD, one year after the start of the pandemic, the demand from parents for child psychologists increased by 60%, while the number of children who need special support even today cannot be precisely determined, but considered “alarmingly large”. It seems that girls aged 15-17 are particularly affected, while especially the frequency of diagnosis of eating disorders in children and adolescents has increased in recent years by 51%. Also according to recent research, one in ten young people aged 14-29 are currently receiving treatment for mental disorders. “These numbers, for school-age people, can clearly be attributed to the closure of schools,” Julian Schmitz, professor of child and adolescent psychology at the University of Leipzig, who, through the evaluation of national and international studies, tells ARD. finds the connection: “The longer the schools remained closed, the more the number of children with psychological problems increased.”

With a time delay the diagnosis of many problems

Scientists explain that many problems are detected with a time delay, which explains why today there is such a great demand for expert support. Children, away from the classrooms, have lost developmental steps, such as the acquisition of language, when we talk about younger ages, while there are gaps in social behavior experiences, which are no longer easy to fill. “There is a developmental delay in many children,” notes Thomas Fischbach, past president of the Professional Association of Pediatricians.

The question that has recently concerned the scientific community as well as politics in Germany is whether the closing of schools has produced results that ultimately justify it. Mr. Schmitz claims, however, that “the children were sacrificed in order for the adults to have a more normal life” and notes that there were other possibilities, such as e.g. telecommuting for adults so that children can still go to school, which Switzerland has chosen as a measure.

ARD also highlights the example of Sweden, with epidemiologist Anders Tegnell stressing that his country relied more on the individual responsibility of citizens and only the students of the older classes stayed at home. “We knew that closing schools would have limited effectiveness in terms of the spread of the disease. It wasn’t worth it for us,” explains the Swedish scientist. In Sweden significantly more people died from the coronavirus than in Germany, but during the second and third waves the numbers evened out.

The federal government has commissioned a Special Committee on Psychiatry to assess the consequences of school closures during the pandemic. The governing coalition planned to boost public health services with 4 billion euros, for more staff and pay increases, but only 70 of the 377 health authorities nationwide offer psychiatric services for children and adolescents, criticizes the representative of the Commission, Matias’ Albers. Furthermore, despite the fact that an increase in specialist psychotherapists is also foreseen in the programmatic agreement of the governing parties, the situation, according to the health service of Cologne, has not changed significantly, with the result that many families often have to wait even six months for diagnosis.

“The longer the waiting time, the more likely it is that the symptoms will become chronic and can only be corrected after long and arduous effort,” warns the Commission. The problem certainly affects more vulnerable groups of citizens, such as immigrants or poorer families. In this context, the federal Ministry of Health has announced that it is working on a law to strengthen health care at the level of municipalities and communities, with the aim of a fairer distribution of possibilities.

Politicians and not scientists who made the decisions about the lockdown

In previously secret documents of the “Robert Koch” Institute, which were released after a lawsuit by the online magazine “Multipolar”, the background of the decisions to drastically limit social contacts during the pandemic is revealed. According to the magazine, it was politicians, not scientists, who decided that the risk assessment should be changed from “high” to “moderate” in the spring of 2020. Based on this assessment, all subsequent measures were taken. In the second lockdown, in December 2020, the Institute pointed out that “lockdowns often have more serious consequences than Covid itself”, while on 4 December 2020 the RKI crisis team had concluded that “schools do not significantly increase number of cases”. Then-Health Minister Jens Spahn has since admitted that closing schools “was a serious mistake”. In his book We Have Much to Forgive Each Other, Mr Spahn apologizes to children and their families and describes pupils, students and young people as “the main victims of the lockdown policy”.

Last week, a short news story in SWR from Ludwigshafen-Hemshof in Rhineland-Palatinate caused a sensation in Germany: Last year, 39 out of 126 first-graders were deemed ineligible for promotion to second-graders. This year, 44 of the 149 children will also stay in first grade. The main reason is considered to be deficiencies in the German language, as the majority of students have an immigrant background and do not speak German at home. In addition, due to the pandemic, many children have not attended nurseries and kindergartens. However, it is clarified that in Primary school students cannot stay in the same class, there is, however, the recommendation of the teachers to the parents, who can decide on the repetition of the class.