Young People's Despair Deepens as COVID-19 Crisis Drags On

📆 2/15/2021 11:30 PM
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Life seemed promising last year to Philaé Lachaux, a 22-year-old business student in France who dreamed of striking out on her own in the live music industry. But the onset of the pandemic, leading to the loss of her part-time job as a waitress, sent her back to live at her family home. Now, struggling to envision a future after months of restrictions, Lachaux says that loneliness and despair seep in at night. “I look at the ceiling, I feel a lump in my throat,” she said. “I’ve never had so many suicidal thoughts.” Sign up for The Morning newsletter from the New York Times “The pandemic feels like a big stop in our lives,” she added. “One that puts us so low that I wonder, ‘What’s the point?’” With curfews, closures and lockdowns in European countries set to drag into the spring or even the summer, mental health professionals are growing increasingly alarmed about the deteriorating mental state of young people, who they say have been among the most badly affected by a world with a foreshortened sense of the future. Last in line for vaccines and with schools and universities shuttered, young people have borne much of the burden of the sacrifices being made largely to protect older people, who are more at risk from severe infections. But the resilience of youth may be overestimated, mental health professionals say. Faced with a restricted social life and added uncertainty at an already precarious moment in their lives, many young people are suffering from a gnawing sense that they are losing precious time in their prime years. Across the world, they have lost economic opportunities, missed traditional milestones and forfeited relationships at a pivotal time for forming identity. “Many feel they’re paying the price not of the pandemic, but of the measures taken against the pandemic,” said Dr. Nicolas Franck, the head of a psychiatric network in Lyon, France. In a survey of 30,000 people that he conducted last spring, young people ranked the lowest in psychological well

Dalia Al-Dujaili, a student at the University of Edinburgh, on campus in Scotland, Feb. 4, 2021.

With curfews, closures and lockdowns in European countries set to drag into the spring or even the summer, mental health professionals are growing increasingly alarmed about the deteriorating mental state of young people, who they say have been among the most badly affected by a world with a foreshortened sense of the future.

“Many feel they’re paying the price not of the pandemic, but of the measures taken against the pandemic,” said Dr. Nicolas Franck, the head of a psychiatric network in Lyon, France. The lasting effects on suicide rates, depression and anxiety are still being measured, but in interviews, a dozen mental health experts in Europe painted a grim picture of a crisis that they say should be treated as seriously as containing the virus.

As the pandemic has dragged on, so has the sense of limbo, she said, and she tried online therapy for the first time last year.One blessing, she said, is that younger people are more open to discussing their struggles.That has not stopped some from feeling guilty, however, given that the pandemic has affected everyone.

The situation was so serious, he said, that his team did not send children home for Christmas, as it usually would. Isolation has also disrupted the usual teenage transition, when young people move from belonging to their family to belonging to their peers, Vermeiren added.In Italy, calls doubled last year to the main hotline for young people who have considered or attempted harming themselves.

“It may be that those in poorer households are more likely to lack enough space and internet access to help with schoolwork and communication with their friends,” Seymour said. “They may also be affected by their parents’ financial worries and stress.”In France, a survey of nearly 70,000 students found that 10% had experienced suicidal thoughts during the first months of the pandemic, and more than a quarter had suffered from depression.

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