The idea is to measure the impact of Covid on the mental health of children, because the health crisis has revealed a real malaise in children and adolescents, “with dark thoughts, suicidal thoughts”.
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The large survey launched Monday, May 2 by Public Health France on the mental health of children “fills a void”estimates on franceinfo the professor Christèle Gras-Le Guen, secretary general of the French Society of Pediatrics and member of the scientific committee of this survey, named Enabee (national survey on the well-being of children).
In concrete terms, 30,000 children will be interviewed. Investigators will travel to schools, from the small section to CM2. They will distribute questionnaires to children, teachers and parents, to get an idea “global” of children’s mental health. These will not be diagnoses, since the forms will be anonymized.
This method is unprecedented, explains Christèle Gras-Le Guen. The teacher adds that“we realized that we had no tools to measure the mental health of children” when there were signs “very spectacular, from the start of the 2020 school year” that they had been affected by the health crisis. “In all the consulting rooms in France, pediatric emergencies, we have seen hundreds of children in ill-being, whether young or old, with dark thoughts, suicidal thoughts, like never before. had seen in France”she explains. “Some have been affected by difficult family histories, since there have been more than 100,000 bereaved families”, she recalls. The children also paid the price for a “general population anxiety” according to her.
The purpose of this Enabee survey is to know the number of children “who are not well” and what makes them unwell. And then propose support and prevention measures. “The idea is to be able to follow the evolution of this mental health over time in order to adjust and take stock of the proposals that have been made”.