As of: 09/28/2021 6:00 p.m.
A nationwide study by the University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf (UKE) examined how stressful children and adolescents are in the corona pandemic in July 2020. Now the Hamburg social welfare authority has published a new study on the basis of these figures, which sheds light on the situation of children and young people from the Hanseatic city.
Even more irritated and even more depressed: Children and young people in Hamburg have probably suffered particularly badly from the Corona crisis – more than in a nationwide comparison. Because parallel to the Germany-wide survey of 11 to 17-year-olds, the UKE also asked more than a thousand young people from Hamburg about their experiences in the first Corona wave. Hamburg’s Senator for Social Affairs Melanie Leonhard (SPD) says: “In fact, the study also made it clear that the situation has often worsened for those who were not doing well before.”
Compared to the national average, the loads were higher in Hamburg, according to Leonhard, because children and young people in metropolitan areas were more affected by the restrictions during the corona pandemic. As an example, she named closed playgrounds in the Hamburg Journal of NDR television.
Psychosomatic complaints
A third of those surveyed stated in the study that there were more fights in the family during the Corona period than before. Children and adolescents from Hamburg reported psychosomatic complaints such as difficulty falling asleep, irritability and back pain or headache, sometimes even daily, more than the average in the whole of Germany. 14 percent said they had problems falling asleep every day.
Majority got through the pandemic well
The Hamburg social authority has evaluated the data collected by the UKE. And they give a very differentiated picture. For example, many 11 to 17-year-olds were more irritable than usual. Nevertheless, most of them – according to the study – got through the first phase of the pandemic reasonably well. And this is exactly what Joachim Walter, chief physician of child and adolescent psychiatry at the Wilhelmsstift Children’s Hospital in Hamburg, confirms: “This is precisely because nature built us in such a way that we have to learn to deal with stress. We have skin that heals when it does it is injured, we also have a psyche that – if it has the appropriate resources, i.e. the appropriate fertilizer, to heal – also normally heals. “
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Everyday school life assessed
The study also gives a differentiated picture when assessing everyday school life: 53 percent of children and adolescents found school more strenuous during the pandemic, 35 percent said it was less strenuous. 14 percent saw no difference.
An intact family is important
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