Prime Minister Jean Castex confirmed Thursday, December 10 that bars and restaurants would remain closed for a while, given the epidemic situation; same situation for theaters, cinemas, and all cultural places.
President Macron addressed young people last week; and we know that they are encountering more and more difficulties. Much has been said about their need to party, hampered by the closure of bars; but it is far from being their only problem. Today we come back with psychoanalyst Claude Halmos to the psychological problems of these young people, which seem to be on the increase.
franceinfo: Why does this period particularly affect young people?
Claude Halmos : The problems of young people are far from being reduced to the fact that they are deprived of parties. The period we are living is psychologically abusive for everyone, but it affects them more particularly, because they are in a period of their life which is a period of construction (They are both building their adult life, and their adult life); and that the current situation is blocking, so to speak, this project, on all levels.
How ?
The current crisis makes their life very hard because it further aggravates their difficulties: many, deprived of the “odd jobs” which allowed them to live, are reduced to precariousness. That is to say deprived not only of all pleasure, but even of the necessary, and permanently prey to the anguish of the next day; which can lead them to depression.
The more so as the situation also deprives them of contact with others, at an age when group life is essential, because it allows the sharing of ideas, fashions, values, but also support, from some by others. And of course the meetings, necessary for love life. And the crisis also mortgages their future.
Comment ?
In order to be well, young people need to be able to move forward and project themselves into the future; that is to say to be sure that they will be able to enter a livable world, and to find a place in it. However, the crisis worsens for them the image of a world that many already felt, in terms of economy, climate, or human relations, more than uncertain. And above all, it blocks the normal course of their development, since it hinders their studies, and their job searches, that is to say the possibility of having, in the long term, a job and a salary, which, conditions of autonomy and freedom from their families are for them the key to adulthood.
The crisis therefore keeps them – and this is very destructive – in an infantilizing position, and moreover, weakens their self-confidence, because young people, like their elders, always think they are responsible for their failures in social life, even when they have nothing to do with it. It is therefore normal that everyone, even those who were previously well, suffer, and we must help them.
Materially: associations are working on it, and they need to be supported; and psychologically. Through a return to group life, and psychological support that helps them regain their strength, understanding that what is happening to them is not due to their incapacity, but to the pandemic which is shaking up all of society.
–
