Month: June 2021

PARIS – European borders and economies are opening up this summer, thanks to falling coronavirus cases and rising vaccination numbers. But experts warn the pandemic’s scars could be long term and profound—especially for young people, a generation Europe cannot afford to lose.

Things are looking up for young Parisians. Bars and restaurants have reopened, also schools and universities, for the last weeks before summer vacations.?

At a community room with other students, Sorbonne University student Katarzyna Mac is studying for final exams. She is grateful that months of coronavirus confinement are over.?

At a community room with other students, Sorbonne University student Katarzyna Mac is studying for final exams. She is grateful that months of coronavirus confinement are over.?

With France’s rolling lockdowns, Mac says, it was difficult and stressful to be alone all day in front of the computer. Like other students in France, she spent most of her academic year taking online classes from home.?

Experts point to multiple ways the crisis has and continues to hit Europe’s youth — causing economic, social and mental distress. Many, like Mac, already live on the edge.?

Shuttered businesses, especially in sectors like hospitality, wiped out job opportunities on which many depend.? European Union statistics estimate more than 17% of people under 25 are out of work — more than twice the regional average. Youth poverty and homelessness are on the rise. So is depression.?

Sarah Coupechoux is Europe studies head for French nonprofit the Abbe Pierre Foundation. She says there is a segment of Europeans today, including young people, who are merely surviving. With the pandemic and job losses, huge lines of young people have been seeking food, and are hungry. A recent report by the charity also explores the growing difficulties Europe’s youth face in finding housing.?

Like many other young Europeans, Mac was too poor to leave home. But she recently managed to find subsidized housing, at a building for young students and workers on the edge of Paris.?

Her apartment has just enough room for a bed, desk and small kitchen. Dirty dishes are piled high in the sink. The refrigerator is mostly empty.?

She gets student aid and a small government stipend. But it’s not enough live on. Her parents don’t always have enough to help her out.?

Days of studying alone have also taken a psychological toll.?

Even before COVID, the disease caused by the coronavirus, she said, she had problems with stress and suicidal thoughts. It got worse with the pandemic. It was especially stressful not to be able to go to class normally.?

COVID-19 is the disease caused by the coronavirus. The pandemic has compounded hardships for other young people — especially, studies find — those from disadvantaged neighborhoods.?

In the working-class Paris suburb of Bobigny, youth activist Stanley Camille says?students had a hard time accessing the internet, which they needed to follow online classes during lockdown. Families are poor in his town, he says. Often there’s only one computer for four or five children.?

Last year, France rolled out a multi-billion-dollar initiative to help its youth get the jobs, training and education they need. Student canteens offer lunches for just over a dollar. European leaders vow to fight against poverty. But experts like Coupechoux say much more is needed.?

Coupechoux says on national and local levels in Europe, institutions must be alerted on the importance of supporting this young generation.?

Mac agrees. She is getting psychological help — but says demand is high and state services are understaffed. She and her neighbors have started a support group — and share basics like milk to get by. Long walks in parks like this one, also help.?

Mac also landed a summer job doing civic service. Mac says she hopes life will finally get back to normal. But with threats of new variants spreading, nothing could be less certain.

Source: Voice of America

LONDON – Most people wouldn’t volunteer to walk through a minefield. Princess Diana did it twice.

On Jan. 15, 1997, Diana walked gingerly down a narrow path cleared through an Angolan minefield, wearing a protective visor and flak jacket emblazoned with the name of The HALO Trust, a group devoted to removing mines from former war zones. When she realized some of the photographers accompanying her didn’t get the shot, she turned around and did it again.

Later, she met with a group of landmine victims. A young girl who had lost her left leg perched on the princess’s lap.

The images of that day appeared in newspapers and on TV sets around the globe, focusing international attention on the then-languishing campaign to rid the world of devices that lurk underground for decades after conflicts end. Today, a treaty banning landmines has 164 signatories.

Those touched by the life of the preschool teacher turned princess remembered her ahead of what would have been her 60th birthday on Thursday, recalling the complicated royal rebel who left an enduring imprint on the House of Windsor.

Diana had the “emotional intelligence that allowed her to see that bigger picture … but also to bring it right down to individual human beings,” said James Cowan, a retired major general who is now CEO of The HALO Trust. “She knew that she could reach their hearts in a way that would outmaneuver those who would only be an influence through the head.”

Diana’s walk among the landmines seven months before she died in a Paris car crash is just one example of how she helped make the monarchy more accessible, changing the way the royal family related to people. By interacting more intimately with the public — kneeling to the level of a child, sitting on the edge of a patient’s hospital bed, writing personal notes to her fans — she connected with people in a way that inspired other royals, including her sons, Princes William and Harry, as the monarchy worked to become more human and remain relevant in the 21st century.

Diana didn’t invent the idea of royals visiting the poor, destitute or downtrodden. Queen Elizabeth II herself visited a Nigerian leper colony in 1956. But Diana touched them — literally.

“Diana was a real hugger in the royal family,” said Sally Bedell Smith, author of “Diana in Search of Herself.” “She was much more visibly tactile in the way she interacted with people. It was not something the queen was comfortable with and still is not.”

Critically, she also knew that those interactions could bring attention to her causes since she was followed everywhere by photographers and TV crews.

Ten years before she embraced landmine victims in Angola, she shook hands with a young AIDS patient in London during the early days of the epidemic, showing people that the disease couldn’t be transmitted through touch.

As her marriage to Prince Charles deteriorated, Diana used the same techniques to tell her side of the story. Embracing her children with open arms to show her love for her sons. Sitting alone in front of the Taj Mahal on a royal trip to India. Walking through that minefield as she was starting a new life after her divorce.

“Diana understood the power of imagery — and she knew that a photograph was worth a hundred words,” said Ingrid Seward, editor-in-chief of Majesty magazine and author of “Diana: An Intimate Portrait.” “She wasn’t an intellectual. She wasn’t ever going to be the one to give the right words. But she gave the right image.”

And that began on the day the 20-year-old Lady Diana Spencer married Prince Charles, the heir to throne, on July 29, 1981, at St. Paul’s Cathedral.

Elizabeth Emanuel, who co-designed her wedding dress, describes an event comparable to the transformation of a chrysalis into a butterfly, or in this case a nursery school teacher in cardigans and sensible skirts into a fairytale princess.

“We thought, right, let’s do the biggest, most dramatic dress possible, the ultimate fairytale dress. Let’s make it big. Let’s have big sleeves. Let’s have ruffles,” Emanuel said. “And St. Paul’s was so huge. We knew that we needed to do something that was a statement. And Diana was completely up for that. She loved that idea.”

But Emanuel said Diana also had a simplicity that made her more accessible to people.

“She had this vulnerability about her, I think, so that ordinary people could relate to her. She wasn’t perfect. And none of us are perfect, and I think that’s why there is this thing, you know, people think of her almost like family. They felt they knew her.”

Diana’s sons learned from their mother’s example, making more personal connections with the public during their charitable work, including supporting efforts to destigmatize mental health problems and treat young AIDS patients in Lesotho and Botswana.

William, who is second in line to the throne, worked as an air ambulance pilot before taking on full-time royal duties. Harry retraced Diana’s footsteps through the minefield for The HALO Trust. Her influence can be seen in other royals as well. Sophie, the Countess of Wessex and the wife of Charles’ brother Prince Edward, grew teary, for example, in a television interview as she told the nation about her feelings on the death of her father-in-law, Prince Philip.

The public even began to see a different side of the queen, including her turn as a Bond girl during the 2012 London Olympics in which she starred in a mini-movie with Daniel Craig to open the games.

More recently, the monarch has reached out in Zoom calls, joking with school children about her meeting with Russian cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin. What was he like, ma’am? “Russian,” she said flatly. The Zoom filled with chuckles.

Cowan, of HALO, said the attention that Diana, and now Harry, have brought to the landmine issue helped attract the funding that made it possible for thousands of workers to continue the slow process of ridding the world of the devices.

Sixty countries and territories are still contaminated with landmines, which killed or injured more than 5,500 people in 2019, according to Landmine Monitor.

“She had that capacity to reach out and inspire people. Their imaginations were fired up by this work,” Cowan said. “And they like it and they want to fund it. And that’s why she’s had such a profound legacy for us.”

Source: Voice Of America

After two suicidal crises during pandemic isolation, 16-year-old Zach Sampson feels stronger but worries his social skills have gone stale.

Amara Bhatia has overcome her pandemic depression but the teen feels worn down, in a state of “neutralness.” Virginia Shipp is adjusting but says returning to normal “is kind of unnormal for me.”

After relentless months of social distancing, online schooling and other restrictions, many kids are feeling the pandemic’s toll or facing new challenges navigating reentry.

A surge in teen suicide attempts and other mental health crises prompted Children’s Hospital Colorado to declare a state of emergency in late May, when emergency department and hospital inpatient beds were overrun with suicidal kids and those struggling with other psychiatric problems. Typical emergency-department waiting times for psychiatric treatment doubled in May to about 20 hours, said Jason Williams, a pediatric psychologist at the hospital in Aurora.

Other children’s hospitals are facing similar challenges.

In typical times, the activities that come as the school year ends — finals, prom, graduations, summer job-seeking — can be stressful even for the most resilient kids. But after more than a year of dealing with pandemic restrictions, many are worn down and simply don’t “have enough in the tank of resilience” to handle stresses that previously would have been manageable, Williams said.

“When the pandemic first hit, we saw a rise in severe cases in crisis evaluation,” as kids struggled with “their whole world shutting down,” said Christine Certain, a mental health counselor who works with Orlando Health’s Arnold Palmer Hospital for Children. ”Now, as we see the world opening back up … it’s asking these kids to make a huge shift again.”

At some children’s hospitals, psychiatric cases have remained high throughout the pandemic; others have seen a more recent surge.

At Wolfson Children’ Hospital in Jacksonville, Florida, behavioral unit admissions for kids in crisis aged 13 and younger have been soaring since 2020 and are on pace to reach 230 this year, more than four times higher than in 2019, said hospital psychologist Terrie Andrews. For older teens, admissions were up to five times higher than usual last year and remained elevated as of last month.

At Dayton Children’s Hospital in Ohio, admissions to the mental health unit increased by 30% from July 2020 through May, totaling almost 1,300. The hospital doubled the number of available beds to 24 and dropped the minimum age for treatment to 9 years from 12 years, said Dr. John Duby, a hospital vice president.

“The overwhelming demand for pediatric mental health services is putting an unprecedented strain on pediatric facilities, primary care, schools and community-based organizations that support kids’ well-being,” said Amy Knight, president of the Children’s Hospital Association.

Dr. Alison Tothy, medical director of the pediatric emergency department at the University of Chicago’s Comer Children’s Hospital, said her ER has seen kids in crisis daily since last year, struggling with suicidal thoughts, cutting and other self-harm behaviors, depression and aggressive outbursts. Kids are stabilized and referred elsewhere for treatment.

“Families are coming to us because we are, in some cases, the last resort. Outpatient resources are scarce,” and parents say they can’t get an appointment for two months, she said.

In Florida, waits for outpatient treatment are even longer and many therapists don’t accept kids insured through Medicaid, Andrews said.

At Children’s Hospital Colorado, emergency department visits for behavioral health problems were up 90% in April 2021 over April 2019 and remained high in May. Though the pace slowed in June, hospital authorities are concerned about another spike when school resumes.

Williams said issues the hospital is treating are “across the board,” from children with previous mental health issues that have worsened to those who never struggled before the pandemic.

Like many states, Colorado doesn’t have enough child and teen mental health therapists to meet demand, an issue even before the pandemic, Williams said.

Children who need outpatient treatment are finding it takes six to nine months for an appointment. And many therapists don’t accept health insurance, leaving struggling families with few options. Delays in treatment can lead to crises that land kids in the ER.

Those who improve after inpatient psychiatric care but aren’t well enough to go home are being sent out of state because there aren’t enough facilities in Colorado, Williams said.

Sampson says “just a lot of stuff” triggered his first crisis last August. The Jacksonville, Florida, teen struggled with online education and spent hours in his room alone playing video games and scrolling the internet, drawn to dark sites that “made my brain hurt.”

He revealed his suicidal thoughts to a friend, who called the police. He spent a week in the hospital under psychiatric care.

Both his parents have worked in mental health jobs but had no idea how he was struggling.

“We had realized he had been spending more time isolating, not really tending to showering and that type of stuff, but we were in the middle of a pandemic. No one was really doing those things,” said his mother, Jennifer Sampson.

The teen started virtual psychotherapy but in March his self-destructive thoughts resurfaced. Hospital psychiatric beds were full so he waited a week in a holding area to receive treatment, his mother recalled.

Now on mood stabilizers, he’s continuing therapist visits, has finished sophomore year and is looking forward to returning to in-person school this fall. Still, he says it’s hard motivating himself to leave the house to go to the gym or hang out with friends.

“I definitely find my social skills are rusty,” Sampson said.

“I feel that this is going to be something that we’re dealing with for quite a while,” his mother said.

That’s likely true, too, for those who haven’t reached a crisis point.

Bhatia, a 17-year-old self-described “stereotypical introvert” with clinical anxiety, also worries about returning to the classroom for senior year.

The Oakland, California, teen says the pandemic began as almost a welcome change. Being social takes effort, and isolation allowed her to recharge. Still, she had bouts of depression, got frustrated with virtual school and missed her friends.

She used to be a hugger but has become “a bit more of a germaphobe” and says the few times she’s been hugged since social distancing restrictions lifted, she froze.

The pandemic has left her worn down, “like running a marathon, and I’m finally reaching the end and I’m just getting so tired at this point.”

“I think I don’t have the energy for happiness,” she said.

For 18-year-old Shipp, also of Oakland, the pandemic hit in her senior year as she was planning a trip to Europe and anticipating college in the fall. Neither happened and she described 2020 as a year of negative thinking, stuck in her room alone with her thoughts.

“I felt depressed and anxious and very scared for the future,” she said.

As a Black woman, she wanted to join marchers protesting George Floyd’s murder but decided close contact with strangers was too risky.

She doesn’t know anyone who got very sick or died, but says she worried about COVID-19 “every single day.” Shipp used meditation to help relieve stress.

She recently got vaccinated and learned college at Cal Poly in Pomona will be in person in the fall. But she’s not sure she’s completely ready.

“It’s still a little weird because now, all of a sudden … you don’t need to wear the mask? It’s like jumping into the water too fast,” Shipp said. “The normalcy is kind of unnormal for me.”

Source: Voice of America