Скачать или смотреть ONLY ON AP French medics' concern over kids' mental health

(12 Mar 2021) Doctors in France have raised concern over the impact of the coronavirus pandemic on the mental health of children.
The country's busiest paediatric hospital has seen a doubling in the number of children and young teenagers needing treatment after attempted suicides.
Paediatric psychiatrists say they're also seeing children with coronavirus-related phobias, tics and eating disorders.
Some are obsessing about infection, scrubbing their hands raw and covering their bodies with disinfectant gel.
When his parents rushed him to the hospital, Pablo had not only decided to stop eating but to stop drinking too.
The 11-year-old was so weakened by months of self-deprivation that his heart was slowing to a crawl.
Medics injected him with fluids and started feeding him nutrients through a tube in his nose - the first steps to stitch back together yet another child coming apart amid the stresses and tumult of the coronavirus crisis.
Also increasingly common, doctors say, are children suffering panic attacks, heart palpitations and other symptoms of mental anguish, and others with chronic addictions to mobile devices and computer screens that have become their sitters, teachers, and entertainers during lockdowns, curfews and school closures.
"We have an increase that is really major in this case of suicide attempts in age 15 and under," said Professor Richard Delorme, who heads the psychiatric unit for children and adolescents where Pablo is hospitalized, at the giant Robert Debré pediatric hospital in Paris.
"The impact of COVID is really having a very specific effect on the mental health of children," he warned.
Pablo's father, Jerome, is still trying to understand how and why his son gradually fell sick with a chronic eating disorder as the pandemic took hold, slowly starving himself until the only foods he would eat were plain rice, tuna and cherry tomatoes.
Jerome suspects that disruptions last year to Pablo's routines may have precipitated his illness.
Because France was locked down, the boy had no classes for months and couldn't say goodbye to his friends and teacher at the end of the school year.
When he was hospitalized at the end of February, Pablo had lost a third of his previous weight.
His heart rate was so slow that medics struggled to find a pulse, and one of his kidneys was shutting down, Jerome says.
Pablo's psychiatrist at the hospital, Dr Coline Stordeur, says some of her other young patients with eating disorders, mostly aged 8 to 12, told her they began obsessing in lockdown about gaining weight, because they couldn't stay active.
One boy compensated by running laps in his parents' basement for hours each day, losing weight so precipitously that he had to be hospitalized.
Others told her they gradually restricted their diet: "No more sugar, then no more fat, and eventually no more of anything," she says.

Find out more about AP Archive: http://www.aparchive.com/HowWeWork
Twitter:   / ap_archive  
Facebook:   / aparchives  
Google+: https://plus.google.com/b/10201102858...
Tumblr: https://aparchives.tumblr.com/​​
Instagram:   / apnews  


You can license this story through AP Archive: http://www.aparchive.com/metadata/you...