More reports of violence, an increase in the number of youths who have tried to harm themselves and a surge in the number of requests for psychiatric treatment, these are some of the long-term consequences of the Corona plague on the youth in Israel.
The difficult data was presented today (Tuesday) by Nava Barak, president of the Elam Association for Youth at Risk, during a speech at the "Mental Account - Israel's Resilience Conference" held in Tel Aviv.
"I call it the 'mental long cube,'" Barak said.
"Loneliness among youth has become more difficult, in the absence of a stable framework over such a long period of time. Adolescents have lost the ability to have a personal relationship or empathy. burden".
Recent data collected by the association among youth and young people who receive assistance from it, shows that following the epidemic, there were 1.5 times more reports of domestic and street violence and the youth were twice as involved in crime.
In addition, the data show that 1.8 times as many teenagers tried to harm themselves and three times as many requests and requests for mental health care were registered.
Barak said that a girl in the organization, who was involved in dealing with the plague, said: "In Corona I felt I had to collect the fragments. Now I have to collect the fragments."
Nava Barak at the Israel Today Conference, Photo: Gideon Markovich
According to Elam's president, the association's employees and volunteers worked for at-risk youth online and on the streets, around the clock - even when many services were reduced due to the Corona restrictions.
Their husbands noticed that the circle of risk was widening, and teenagers who had not had any difficulties in the past turned to the organization for help.
At the same time, teenagers who were frameless even before the outbreak of the plague, faced in the days of the Corona with great suffering and deterioration in their mental state.
Barak said that in the combined work of the systems, education, health, and welfare, in joining forces and creating a therapeutic continuum, it will also be possible to deal with the current crisis.
"This is the order of the day, to see the youth, to be interested and supportive - as parents and also as a society - to provide tools, set boundaries and strengthen the formal and informal envelopes of support. We need to recalculate a path, understand, that the corona has changed us all," Barak said.
"Teens need an eye to see and direct them, in their adolescence journey."
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