Professor Kėval: the contact between parents and children seemed to have intensified, unfortunately a completely paradoxical effect emerged

“Children are social beings, they need communication like water like a flower. At first, it seemed that when families close at home, parents work from home, the contact between parents and children should logically intensify, unfortunately, a completely paradoxical effect arose ”, says the doctor.

According to him, the psychological health of children is deteriorating dramatically: more than every second teenager now feels the symptoms of depression.

“The psychological health of the children is deteriorating drastically. If the same COVID’as children are not as affected as the elderly population, this side effect is huge. Mainly due to school closings, home closings. In the case of adolescents, the number of self-harm and suicides has increased. Those percentages are threatening: More than every second teenager is diagnosed with depressive symptoms, about 60-65 percent. symptoms of anxiety in adolescents ”, said R. Kėvalas on Delfi’s television program“ Conversation with Daiva Žeimyte-Biliene ”.

The professor said it was already clear today that school closings would have far greater negative consequences than they would have had if educational institutions had been opened.

“There is data from UNICEF for 191 countries. The damage when schools open is not as great as when children do not go to school. I am no longer talking about nutrition problems, not just malnutrition, it is about the huge problem of obesity. And everything else: in Lithuania, preventive inspections, as well as vaccinations, decreased by about a fifth. We are in a dangerous enough situation where vaccine-controlled diseases can cause outbreaks. First of all, it is measles, “he said.

Adolescents are the most vulnerable

The deterioration of psychological health is particularly observed among adolescents, since they are, according to the doctor, the most vulnerable group.

“They are basically still kids, but the main social bubble they interact with is their peers. And we take the same most important opportunity to communicate with each other. No long distance communication will definitely replace honest conversation, group communication. <…> I am very sorry that the 5th to 11th grade students did not go to school for a short time, ”said R. Kėvalas.

According to him, when children return to school, the incidence increases slightly.

“When epidemiologists again offered to suspend contact learning in elementary classes last week, they wanted to call and ask what the cost was. I calculated that morbidity increased by one and a half to two percent, which is completely in line with the norm. And so should we re-lock students at home? “I remember both the flu pandemic and the swine flu, when entire classes fell apart, when we had overcrowded intensive care units, it was also a difficult situation, but no one thought of closing schools,” the teacher recalled.

According to him, it can be felt that many more children also experience psychological violence during a pandemic.

“We can take a standard situation: two working parents, one or two children at home and they all close, parents also have to do their professional duties, children need distance education, swimming pools, parks are closed, there is no way out. . This environment can be tolerated psychologically for some time. It builds up like a vaporizer and at some point those vapors have to come out. Often these “vapors” go to the weakest and most vulnerable member of the family, “the doctor explained.

Forgotten sickness may return

R. Kėvalas said that this is also a matter of great concern in Lithuania. The number of preventive screening services has decreased, including preventive vaccination of children. According to the doctor, if these trends continue, diseases much more dangerous than the coronavirus can return.

“I will repeat that COVID-19 is not a big problem for children, but we had 11 very very serious patients in the pediatric intensive care unit. The infectivity of COVID-19 is not very high (i.e. 1, British strains – 1.2), but the infectivity of diseases such as measles, whooping cough, diphtheria is high – 16-18. And the outbreaks of these diseases, especially if the vaccination against measles in the population falls below 92%, have a huge impact, you have to think about it, “the doctor warned.

In his opinion, communication errors may have also been made, leading a part of the public to critically analyze vaccination in general or, currently, vaccination against COVID-19.

“Probably the problem here is that negative information is read by four times more readers than positive information, which has been confirmed by research and the arguments of scientists. Second, there may have been communication problems before and now, but we will learn from it and we will be able to draw conclusions from it, because this is definitely not the first or the last pandemic, ”said R. Kėvalas.

Speaking about the protest of several dozen residents near the Kaunas city municipality against mandatory COVID-19 testing of primary school children, the teacher recalls once again evaluating the enormous consequences of learning from home.

“The protest is a sign of a free country, people can protest. But in this particular case, we are talking about a bulk sample that is taken at a depth of one and a half centimeters. This is not a PCR that is extracted deeply. of the nasopharynx and it is certainly quite unpleasant. The state has created conditions: stack samples and go to school. “We should probably choose a rational between two incomparable things”, said the teacher in “Conversation with Daiva Žeimyte-Biliene” of Delfi TV .