Experts notice pandemic’s mental health toll on German youth

Experts notice pandemic’s mental health toll on German youth

BERLIN (AP) “” Pollina Dinner returned to school in Berlin for the first time this week after two months of lockdown. The nine-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 sighing deeply. "And wearing this mask is even worse than all the shops being closed.“

Psychiatrists, psychologists and pediatricians in Germany have voiced growing 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 future 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,“ Julia Asbrand, a professor of child and youth psychology at Berlin's Humboldt University, told The Associated Press.

A recent survey by the University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf found that about one