Protect the COVID Generation | Press

The speed at which Omicron is spreading is damaging everyone’s morale, but special attention will need to be paid to the young.

True, the current situation required that schools be closed quickly. We should have closed them last Friday to be honest. We must avoid encouraging outbreaks.

That said, let’s face it, the prognosis for a return to school in early January is pretty bleak. While the young people had finally found a semblance of normality, they see a train of new measures arriving, and the possibility of another confinement, with discouragement. We understand them.

In all this commotion to fight back against the new variant, let’s not neglect them.

The vulnerability of young people may be less apparent than that of their grandparents, but it is no less important.

We have counted the studies that have documented the impacts of the pandemic on their mental health. Since the arrival of COVID-19 in our lives, their anxiety has increased. They sleep poorly, exercise less and spend long hours in front of screens. The lack of social contact among adolescents and young adults, who have spent a lot of time in isolation, is of particular concern for their development.

In a study conducted last January by professor-researcher at the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Sherbrooke Mélissa Généreux, we learned that nearly one in two young people attending a school felt symptoms compatible with anxiety disorders or an anxiety disorder. major depression. We were at the worst of the crisis, when all schools were closed and students continued their distance education. A few months later, the CHU Sainte-Justine observed that the number of consultations for eating disorders had doubled within its establishment.

We don’t want to go back there.

The most recent report on youth mental health dates back to December 13 and is based on a survey of 10,000 Canadians. Produced by the Mental Health Commission of Canada, it is interested in several sub-groups of society, including young people who already have a vulnerability, either alcohol and cannabis use already installed, or health problems. mental. Among young respondents aged 16 to 24, 45% report moderate to severe anxiety symptoms, and more than a third (40%) say their alcohol or cannabis use has increased in the past month. They also say they are less able to handle stress in a pandemic.

These data are worrying. They show that young people who were already at risk before the pandemic are even more vulnerable. Without help, they risk getting bogged down in chronic drug use and addiction. The Commission reiterates the importance of continuing to invest in mental health and substance use support services for young people.

We will have to keep all these studies in mind if we ever consider the closure of educational institutions again after the holidays.

Because it would be naive to think that what young people are going through now will have no impact on their future, on the adults they will become. After almost two years of the pandemic, a portion of this “COVID generation” will likely remain marked.

And this is even more true in disadvantaged families where the loss of a job, working in an environment that is not always safe, lack of space and overcrowding only increase the level of anxiety. .

Let us not minimize all that young people have lost: beyond graduation balls, graduation ceremonies, trips with friends or a simple carelessness specific to their age, the pandemic has deprived them of rituals of passage, friendly encounters and a multitude of pivotal moments that define youth. Moments that will never come back.

Add to this the climate change crisis as a backdrop that makes them even more pessimistic. A survey conducted last fall by the firm Ipsos among 501 young Canadians aged 18 to 29 revealed that more than half of respondents (59%) were afraid of climate change. About the same proportion (57%) of youth said they were nervous, and more than a third (41%) felt guilty. In short, their mental health is strained by the times.

Last Thursday, Premier Legault reiterated the importance of keeping schools open. It is of course the rules of public health that will dictate the next step, but let us not forget the young people in the decision-making. Their well-being depends on it.