REGGIO EMILIA – Young people who are increasingly anxious and depressed, increasingly forced to be admitted to child neuropsychiatry and risk dropping out of school and being isolated. It is a dark picture presented to the culture commission by the regional guarantor for children, the Reggio Emilia Claudia Giudiciduring the annual report on the activity carried out.
Numbers even more significant because they refer to the immediate post-Covid period, with the pandemic presenting a very high cost in terms of loss of relational skills, especially for adolescents. In Emilia Romagna, between 2021 and 2022, the minor population dependent on social services increased by 11.6%, hospital admissions to child neuropsychiatry departments were 818, four times higher than in 2010.
Even more worrying are the first data from the study launched last June on social withdrawal, the “hikikomori” registered were 762 with a peak in the 15-16 year age group (38.3%) but with a significant onset starting from the age of 12. Social withdrawal which is directly linked to school dropout, with 243 children no longer attending.
But all that has been defined as the “anxious generation” highlights a pervasive digital use differentiated between males, video games, and females, social media, and a constant increase in cases of anxiety (33.5%) and depression (16%). Among the causes, there is also the increase in the same disorders in parents, but the indirect ones deriving from economic precariousness cannot be ignored. According to data collected by Save the Children, 15.9% of Emilian minors live in a condition of relative poverty and 18.6% live in houses with structural problems.
Reggio Emilia Emilia Romagna region anxiety depression youthful distress anxious young people depressed young people
