“The discomfort of young people is too often underestimated”

“Psychologists who are dealing with what happened to Paderno Dugnano in the next few days they will have the opportunity to delve deeper into the dynamics that led this 17-year-old boy to do something that seems unheard of. Even in this case, the first testimonies speak of a ‘normal’ boy and therefore the homicidal frenzy that is so often talked about comes back into play. Generally, violence manifests itself as such in a way that appears sudden but has a genesis that prepares the ground. It is easier to talk about ‘sudden madness’ but even the most extreme and incomprehensible gestures have a history that is important to understand. And understanding does not mean justifying, let’s not get confused about this, if anything it is the idea of ​​a sudden frenzy that serves to justify and avoid understanding”. So David Lazzari, president of the National Council of the Order of Psychologists (CNOP), told Adnkronos Saluteintervenes about what happened in Paderno Dugnano (Milan) where a 17-year-old boy confessed to killing his father, mother and 12-year-old brother “because he felt oppressed.”

Another one fundamental reflection “it is linked to the concept of psychological distress, which is often trivialized – Lazzari emphasizes – it is thought that only a serious mental illness is worthy of attention and is underestimated. An illness that sends out striking signals that everyone can see. Discomfort, on the other hand, often screams in a silent way but, if you want to listen, you can hear it. And it can be the manifestation not so much of deviations or ruptures of the psyche but of extreme psychological poverty, a sort of desertification that prevents the construction of adequate subjective identities and creates an interior void that is sometimes unsustainable. These are issues that we psychologists have been denouncing for years but that make little noise except in extreme situations”.

A “discomfort of our young people that we see everywhere around us but in which very little is invested, just think of psychology in schools that is still a mirage – Lazzari points out – When the discomfort is so widespread and so little listened to it can happen that someone arrives at extreme gestures, against themselves, suicide is the second cause of death among young people, or against other people, starting paradoxically from those closest to them”. Obviously “it is these gestures that frighten and alarm, and it is right to try to understand, but if we want to do something we must give answers beyond the individual tragic cases”, he concludes.