Pain
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As every time France faces a new peak in Covid-19 contamination, child psychiatrists see children flocking in droves to their services. To the point of not being able to take care of them all.
“It starts again, it flares up completely, we are really not dramatizing.” Sylvie Tordjman, head of the child psychiatry center of the Guillaume Régnier hospital center in Rennes, is worried. In recent weeks, as Covid-19 contamination has started to rise again, the child psychiatrist has once again seen a large number of children arrive in her department for serious psychological problems. By force, she would have almost got used to it: wave after wave, this kind of situation is repeated: “We have the impression that it is exponential, that with each resumption of the epidemic the phenomenon is amplified.”
Sylvie Tordjman supports her alert with figures: as of December 9, the emergency rooms of her establishment had already welcomed for this month as many young people for suicide attempts or suicidal thoughts as throughout December 2019, before the pandemic . “This winter is worse than anything. We will probably pass our peak in March, she laments. In one month, 55 children or adolescents had visited our service. Against 13 for the same month a year earlier. “ At the time of the very first confinement. The child psychiatrist was surprised by the sudden increase in contamination in early November. On the other hand, she totally expected to see her service underwater again a few weeks later: “Every time there is a new wave it’s the same thing. We were just spared during the first one …