The covid-19 pandemic has aggravated many situations of anxiety, depression and eating disorders in young people, as well as alcohol and tobacco consumption, according to the coordinator of the adolescent care center Aparece.
Due to the confinement imposed by the covid-19 pandemic, “young people stayed at home, ate more, gained weight. Others started on restrictive diets because they had put on a lot of weight, ”he said in an interview with the Lusa Maria de São José Tavares agency.
According to the doctor, these are the most evident situations in adolescents who currently turn to Aparece– Saúde Jovem, a space created 21 years ago by the Government at the Sete Rios Health Center, in Lisbon, so that teenagers could have a space dedicated exclusively to their problems and could share all their doubts in a space of confidentiality and privacy.
“Aparece has played a very important role, and it will continue to have it, in this pandemic phase”, and at this moment 90% of the consultations are by teleconsultation: “Every day, eight to nine teenagers with whom we are most concerned are contacted and that there are many ”.
Pregnant women have always been assisted in person, as well as young people who appear “without appointment”.
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At this moment, Aparece has “immense appeals”, even for first consultations, “to which we need to respond” in “an effective way” in this phase “when families are so distressed and teenagers too”.
Asked if young people are afraid to go back to school and contract covid-19 and infect family members, the doctor said that there is “a very great fear”.
“We have several teenagers who got infected on this route, even many, and whole families,” said Maria de São José Tavares, saying that there were many young people who, “when it was the period of greatest freedom, exaggerated and made nonsense, and others who have even afraid to leave and are isolated ”.
“This is very heterogeneous, but the environment in general is fragile in many adolescents,” he said, stressing that the pandemic “has aggravated the phobia, the fears”, but also the increase in tobacco and alcohol consumption.
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For the coordinator of Aparece, the impact of this pandemic on society is enormous: “We have a lot of teenagers that their parents are unemployed” and, therefore, pointing out that we need to give them attention and not take “the energy out of a service that is so important”.
At the moment, there are 3,500 adolescents enrolled in Aparece, half of which belong to the Grouping of Health Centers (ACES) Lisboa Norte and the rest from other groups in the Lisbon Metropolitan Area.
“We have at least 30 new teenagers per month. With the pandemic we had a decrease, which has to do with the environmental and social context ”, he said, hoping that the face-to-face consultations will reopen in September.
As reasons for this decrease, he pointed out the fact that young people leave the house less and the classroom lessons have given way to the telescope.
“Many of the adolescents are referred for first consultations by schools, which in this period did not exist,” he explained.
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Using a telescope, teachers did not have the opportunity to assess some adolescent disorders or even absenteeism and school dropout, reasons for which they are often referred to.
“So, all of this has changed a lot” and “teenagers will come out of this pandemic with so many weaknesses, with so many added fears, with so many impossibilities to make up for this whole period in which they were confined”.
For these reasons, he defended, “it is necessary to be very attentive to their needs and avoid creating new barriers in accessing the Aparece adolescent care center.
The covid-19 pandemic has already claimed more than 701,000 deaths and infected more than 18.5 million people in 196 countries and territories, according to a report by the French agency AFP.
In Portugal, 1,740 people died of 51,848 confirmed to be infected, according to the most recent bulletin from the Directorate-General for Health.
The disease is transmitted by a new coronavirus detected in late December in Wuhan, a city in central China.
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