Experts raise alarm over pandemic’s mental toll on children

BERLIN — Pollina Dinner returned to school in Berlin for the first time this week after two months of lockdown. The 9-year-old third grader was thrilled to see her classmates and teachers again but frets about the coronavirus pandemic’s effect on her life.

“I’m not afraid of the coronavirus, I’m afraid that everything will continue like this — that my school will close again, I won’t be able to see my friends, and that I can’t go to the movies with my family,” the girl said, fingering her blue medical mask. “And wearing this mask is even worse than all the shops being closed.”

Psychiatrists, psychologists and pediatricians in Germany have voiced alarm that school closings, social restrictions and other precautions are magnifying the fear, disruption and stress of the pandemic among Germany’s 13.7 million children and teenagers, raising the prospect of a mental health crisis.

“We don’t have any long-term studies yet, but there’s lots of anecdotal evidence of a crisis-driven rise in hospitalizations and overflowing psychologists’ practices,” said Julia

Asbrand, a professor of child and youth psychology at Berlin’s Humboldt University.

A recent survey by the University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf found that about one child in three is suffering from pandemic-related anxiety or depression or is exhibiting psychosomatic symptoms like headaches or stomach aches. Children from poorer and immigrant families are disproportionally affected, according to the survey.

Pollina, who immigrated from Russia with her family in 2019, worries about forgetting much of her German because she speaks only

Russian at home. She is one of 150 youngsters from underprivileged families who, before the pandemic, regularly spent time after school at a youth support program on the eastern outskirts of the German capital.

Arche — Ark in English — is based in Berlin’s Hellersdorf district, a neighborhood of drab concrete buildings.

“Many have completely withdrawn and don’t want to get out of their rooms anymore. They’ve gained a lot of weight, are playing online games nonstop and don’t have any more structure in their everyday lives,” Arche founder Bernd Siggelkow said.