Health, psychiatrist De Filippis: “Young people depressed because they are alone and invisible”

At the root of the anxiety or depression that affect half of Italian adolescents “there is a lot of loneliness and sometimes even the inability to see ourselves as performing. We adults are obsessively trying to raise high-performing young people, but we forget that they only ask to to be happy. Furthermore, the teenager feels invisible, pampered as a child, but then left to himself when he is older. Result? Many times the parent turns into a teenager to please the child, he becomes his friend the adult must be the adult, the father must be the father, the mother must be the mother, parents cannot compete over who has more appeal on social media.” Thus to Adnkronos Salute Sergio De Filippis, professor of addiction psychiatry at the University of Rome La Sapienza, health director of Villa von Siebenthal, on the sidelines of the presentation – today in Rome – of the ‘Do you see me?’ project.

Within schools, the initiative actively involved over 1,800 students, teachers, families, experts and professionals from the area. The aim of the project – promoted by Lundbeck Italia in collaboration with Your Business Partner – is to listen to adolescents and respond to their unexpressed needs.

“We obsessively think that our child must be the best at playing football or basketball, the best at school – remarks De Filippis, who is also the scientific consultant of the Mi videte? project – without understanding that this is the pleasure of us parents and not our son’s. We have to make sure that kids make their mistakes and then get back up on their own. Scars are even more important at an early age you will remember it even as an adult.” Knowing that “there are many kids who are experiencing discomfort at an adolescent age and that this discomfort, if not intercepted, then leads to a real disorder – underlines the psychiatrist – worries me a lot”. And we “adults have the duty to be able to intercept, to make the adolescent less invisible and to prevent our children from using social media and tablets indiscriminately from the age of 6-8”, he concludes.