After Covid-19, young French people suffer an unprecedented wave of depression

Repeated confinements, uncertainties about the future, guilt in the face of the epidemic … The Covid-19 crisis has caused an unprecedented increase in depressive episodes among young French people, according to Public Health France. This wave is likely to mark an entire generation.

This research work was carried out using questionnaires from approximately 25,000 randomly selected French people in order to measure the frequency of depressive episodes within the population in 2021.

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For twenty years, similar studies have been carried out regularly in France, the previous one dating back to 2017. Between the last two, the Covid-19 has been there, and cases of depression have experienced an unprecedented jump, a conclusion that goes into the meaning of other work already carried out abroad.

Young people particularly affected

This increase affects the entire population, but it is particularly the 18-24 year olds who are affected. Among them, the proportion of depressive episodes has almost doubled to reach about a fifth of those questioned.

Impossible, of course, to establish in each case a precise link of cause and effect between the Covid-19 crisis and the onset of depression, especially since the causes of this disease always obey multiple factors, which range from the patient’s personal history to his physiology.

But, in general, “the stress caused by (the) Covid-19 and the restrictions imposed to control (it) appears to be one of the main explanatory hypotheses for this increase”say the researchers.