Genoa – Restless boys, locked in their rooms, unable to relate to the outside world. But above all full of anger, venting against themselves. The picture of Genoese adolescents, seen through the eyes of the doctors of the Neuropsychiatry department of the Gaslini hospital, is truly worrying: compared to the pre-Covid period the number of hospitalizations for acute psychiatric disorders has almost quadrupled. In particular, cases of self-harm are on the rise, but also anxiety disorders, mood disorders with suicidal intentions or attempts and eating disorders.
An increase that it mostly affects girls: hospitalizations went from 72 in 2019 to 270 in 2022, when 73% of hospitalized patients were female against a percentage of 46% in the pre-pandemic period. What most of the patients have in common is anger and aggression against themselves which transforms into suicidal thoughts (from 3 to 49 cases in three years), attempts to commit suicide (increased from 1 to 11), acts of self-harm ( tenfold, from 7 to 70) and past eating disorders (from 33 to 116). On the other hand, the numbers of behavioral disorders that lead to aggression towards others are collapsing: from 25 pre-pandemic cases to 3 last year.
The data were disclosed on the occasion of the meeting organized by the CEI (Italian Episcopal Conference), entitled “Mental health of children and adolescents: new emergencies”, which was held in the Aula Magna of the Giannina Gaslini, in the presence of the bishop of Genoa, Monsignor Marco Tasca. “Since the first months of the pandemic emergency we have observed an increase in disorders such as self-harm, anxiety, suicidal ideation or attempts as well as eating disorders and somatoform spectrum disorders – explains Lino Nobili, director of the Child Neuropsychiatry Operative Unit at Gaslini – But even more alarming is the data on hospitalizations for psychopathological frailty which have grown exponentially since 2019”.
“Also the prevalence of hospitalizations of female subjects has progressively increased, stabilizing in the last year on the data of 70-75% of total casesconsistent with national data” added Laura Siri, head of the Adolescent Psychiatry section at the Gaslini Children’s Neuropsychiatry Department.
“The increase in the number of hospitalizations for psychiatric pathologies recorded in recent years at Gaslini, as in Italy, is a fact that alone tells the real emergency situation with which our system is dealing today – concludes Raffaele Spiazzi, medical director of Gaslini – but it is also just the top of an iceberg, which also embodies the difficulty of the territory to promptly offer accommodation in therapeutic communities or in services psychiatry for adults”.
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