The World Health Organization revealed that the Corona epidemic has affected the mental health of children and adolescents.
The organization said, in a report issued by its regional office in Europe that the epidemic has greatly affected the mental health of children and adolescents worldwide, and that girls in older schools were among the groups most affected, reports Al-Rai daily.
The organization stated that it must focus on the need for targeted intervention and the development of psychological support systems to mitigate the long-term consequences.
However, the director of the organization’s regional office in Europe, Hans Kluge, indicated that these results were based on surveys conducted between 2021 and 2022.
The impact of age, gender, economic status, social support structures, and school closures on young people and adolescents, during the Corona epidemic, and the impact of the aforementioned factors on their mental health, were analyzed.
Kluge explained that the pandemic is having a different impact on children and adolescents, especially children from the most disadvantaged backgrounds, whose schools have been closed for periods.
New data released by the organization showed that older schoolgirls were affected more in their mental health, and this calls for urgent action such as providing better support at home, school and social activities.
In addition, the organization indicated that the worrying thing is that adolescents from less affluent families were more likely to report the negative impact of the epidemic on their lives, even if they received the same level of social support as their richer peers, and this calls for additional support for vulnerable segments of the population. .
According to BBC, researchers collected health data for more than 38,000 children and adolescents from different countries after the outbreak of the epidemic and the University of Toronto researchers found an “extraordinarily large” increase in the number of cases of diabetes.
The study team said that the reason for this may be due to the burden placed on health services at the time of the Corona outbreak.
They also explained that there is another hypothesis for this, which is that exposure to certain germs in childhood can help protect against a number of diseases, including diabetes. The researchers believe that the closures and physical distancing during the Corona outbreak could have deprived children of sufficient exposure to germs and not building immunity against them.