Health, it’s an alarm for kids: eating disorders and suicide attempts due to the lockdown effect

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The lockdown led to a 120% increase in eating disorders among teens. The first accesses registered during the whole of 2019 in the Child Neuropsychiatry Department of the Asst of Monza were 70, they were 154 in 2020. And in the month of January 2021 alone there are already 20 new cases.
These are the most disconcerting numbers of the lockdown effect on children and adolescents followed by the specialist department of San Gerardo with 4,700 minors in care, under the direction of Professor Renata Nacinovich.

Professor, what are the effects of the pandemic on children already being treated for neuropsychiatric diseases?
In the first lockdown we have seen above all in the most serious subjects followed in rehabilitation some regressions compared to the last conquests; the recovery of therapies remotely, via web platforms, was certainly important, but not equally effective for everyone. Paradoxically, some children already taken to retreat as those suffering from school phobias have been better, finding themselves having to respect rules that supported their frailties.

What are the differences between the first and second lockdown?
In the first lockdown, most of the parents were at home with their children and this, except in particular situations of serious family distress, was a great help. With the resumption of the second wave, things were more difficult for everyone. We found greater discomfort in adolescents, who were affected by the suspension of activities in the presence in terms of social isolation and school disinvestment, up to abandonment in some cases and in conditions of decompensation. In the little ones we found a delay in the acquisition of reading and writing in those who experienced the lockdown in the first year of primary school. In the most severe cases of autistic patients there was a worsening of irritability and states of agitation, which required a more intensive pharmacological intervention. During this second lockdown, requests for access to services have increased, reflecting the growing difficulties in a situation where the emergency continues.

What are the most frequent inconveniences?
With an acronym coined by a colleague, Raid, we could speak of “Anger, isolation, depression”. There were mainly two opposite reactions in manifesting one’s discomfort: withdrawal and aggression. The closure from the outside world has sometimes also become the abandonment of Dad (distance learning, ed), of contacts via social networks, with the appearance of somatization, hypochondriac anxieties, depression, sometimes psychotic imbalances. At other times, hyperconnection has led to sleep disturbances, to a subversion of the normal rhythms of daily activity and rest, to the loss of even emotional stability that daily routines favor. Aggression can manifest itself towards family members, peers or sometimes against themselves, hence the increase in episodes of self-harm, including the now frequent self-cutting (cutting oneself, ed) and the increase in suicide attempts that accounted for 14% of hospitalization cases. Mood disorders (19% of admissions) increased by 7%, while the average age of admissions fell to 15 years.

What link between lockdown and eating disorders?
Hospitalizations for anorexia nervosa were 45% of the total with an increase of 14% compared to 2019. Comparing the new cases arrived in 2020 compared to 2019, we recorded a 120% increase with a greater psychopathological severity. The requests for anorexia are constantly increasing, we have new requests almost every day, in many cases they report “20 kg lost” since the start of the lockdown. Our day hospital, in the face of increasingly numerous requests, had to readjust its practices by reducing the frequency of access for each patient to maintain everyone’s care. Even so, we had more than 2,000 total hits in the year.

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