Health, psychiatrist Mencacci: “An agency to promote mental health”

“We need a national agency for mental health. Our country should have coordination to overcome regional inequalities. The right to mental health is violated in the regions because not everyone has access to services. We need coordination so that institutions can from the outset promoting mental health, from pregnancy, prevention in schools, identifying predictors of risk factors: we report the most remote allergies, but not the risk of mental problems. “Thus Claudio Mencacci, psychiatrist, co-president of Italian Society of Neuropsychopharmacology, speaking at the talk ‘Covid, war, economic crisis … which solutions for infodemic anxiety?’, Eighth webinar promoted and organized by Allies for Health, the portal dedicated to medical-scientific information supported from Novartis. The meeting – moderated by Federico Luperi, Innovation and New Media Director of Adnkronos – was also attended by David Lazzari, pre President of the National Council of the Order of Psychologists (Cnop), and Daniele Francescon, co-founder of Serenis, a digital platform active in psychological support. At the center of the debate – broadcast live on Adnkronos’ social channels and available on the aleatiperlasalute.it portal – is the question of the mental effects of the constant state of uncertainty in which one is living after two years of pandemic, marked by physical restrictions and social issues, as well as the fear of contagion, which was followed by the war in Ukraine with tension and concern for the economic and financial question. “We were not well before the pandemic, or syndemic, since it involved so many aspects – explains Mencacci – Our young people were already suffering: 1 out of 7 had a mental disorder. The pandemic has caused the problem to explode and so: 1 in 4 has depressive disorders and 1 in 5 anxiety disorders. These manifestations have had their decline with self-harm behaviors, violence. For correct information ”it must be remembered that“ suicides have not increased. It is advent that our young people, exposed to total unpredictability, to the change in the emancipatory passages of relational, emotional, sporting, group life, to a change and an inversion of sleep-wake rhythms, have increased vulnerability with extreme manifestations towards themselves such as self-harm and outside, with a clamor of the gang phenomenon with multiple reports “of violence. A young person is more vulnerable in stressful conditions such as the pandemic one, because” he has not built the trajectories of the future – continues the psychiatrist – yes finds more anxiety and this manifests it in ways of suffering that we see the surface of, but we have not seen the karst river we are sitting on. The effects are seen from a distance. There are times when introverted and more closed children have had their ideal moment, but on those who are for social life, as a group, we will see the effects later on because what the Anglo-Saxons call ‘languishing’, the perdit to motivation, traveling further below the threshold and the serious loss of the possibility of development, of the future “. As recalled during the live streaming, citing the univocal data of the scientific societies of psychologists and neuropsychiatrists of childhood and adolescence , the explosive mix between ‘clinical danger’ and social uncertainty has led to an increase in serious psychiatric pathologies: + 30% in adolescents, emotional-affective dysregulation, self-harm, violence, substance use, depression and + 70% of eating behavior in minors. There are 9 million Italian children and adolescents with emotional disorders due to pandemic stress. Compared to 2019, accesses to neuropsychiatry services for children and adolescents in hospitals increased by 84%, suicide attempts by 82%, suicidal ideation by up to 200% and cases of anorexia doubled.