Economic crisis, effects of climate change, war, international tensions, atomic fears, and on the health front a record flu arrived after almost 3 years of Covid. The recent past is dotted with a sequence of emergencies that also weigh on people’s psychological health, “in particular the most vulnerable ones such as adolescents and the elderly who, with the succession of negative events, see their capacity for resilience weakened”. Psychiatrist Massimo Di Giannantonio, past president of the Italian Society of Psychiatry (Sip), explains this to Adnkronos Salute, commenting on the many anxieties that have occurred in recent years.
“Obviously it is important – he underlines – to be aware of the proportions, i.e. the quality and quantity of negative situations that a population has to face. The paradigm is the communities affected by the war, which undergo a series of stimuli – frustrations, damages, threats, traumas – incomparable with other situations linked to limited emergencies. The theme is resilience, i.e. the ability to adapt positively to environmental difficulties, in which the quantity of negative pressures has a weight”. Currently, “even if our situation is not one of war – Di Giannantonio begins – the sequence of negative events that start from the economic crisis of a few years ago, passing through Covid and the consequences of the war in Ukraine, certainly has an impact that weakens , which makes the general population more vulnerable, from the point of view of psychopathological suffering, going to hit the frail with greater negative consequences”.
With this definition, the psychiatrist points out, “we understand adolescents in particular, because they carry on their shoulders the weight of years of pandemic and an uncertain future horizon full of pitfalls. And also elderly people who have a load of suffering together with a less ability to react”, adds Di Giannantonio, highlighting that the solution is in social relationships: “The number one enemies to fight are loneliness, the poverty of intersocial and emotional relationships within the places of existence. Both for adolescents and for the recipe for the elderly is to stimulate, compose, increase dialogue, emotional relationships, mutual comfort. The human being is mainly social. The more sociability increases – assures the specialist – the more effective antibodies are built to psychopathological suffering”.
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